Denial

I don't usually do horror stories, but I thought I'd try my hand at the genre when I got this idea. The story is based on the song She's Leaving Home by The Beatles. Any thoughts and constructive criticism is more than welcome - go ahead and tear it apart!

Picks up the letter that’s lying there,
Standing alone at the top of the stairs
(She's Leaving Home - The Beatles)

Shauna noticed the white square at her feet just as she was about to bound past it. Her heart thudding so loudly in her chest she was sure the sound must be audible from the large hall below the staircase, she stopped in her mad dash and began bending down to pick it up. Part of her knew she should not be doing this, that she should be rushing to the front door and out towards her car as fast as it was humanly possible, but another part of her could not help herself. What if this small piece of paper had some of the answers she so desperately needed?

She straightened up, unfolding it at the same time as she tried to steady her breathing. She felt almost like a walking paradox, really – seconds ago she didn’t care how much noise she was making as long as she managed to leave the house before whoever she had heard upstairs found her, but now that she had found the letter she suddenly felt the necessity to be absolutely silent so as not to be heard, escape or no escape. It didn’t make sense, even to her.

It was blank. Shauna was about to crumple it just as her face crumpled in disappointment when she realized there was nothing to find on it… except for a spot of what looked like blood. Or was it really a spot? It resembled a ring of sorts more, or, at a stretch, perhaps an “O”…

Oliver.

The thought hit her like a slap on the face.

What did this mean though? That whomever she had heard rummaging in her bedroom upstairs had her husband? Or was it meaningless, and it was just a bit of paper that fell out of Oliver’s briefcase on his way to work that morning?

Yes, that must be it. It was just a coincidence, and the substance probably wasn’t even blood, just red ink. She was sure Oliver only ever used black ink, but perhaps someone in his office used red, and he just ended up with this particular piece of paper in his briefcase. Surely, it did not mean anything was wrong.

And if this were true, then perhaps she had imagined the sounds she had thought she heard upstairs. The shadow she had been convinced that fell across the crack in the doorway to her office. That could have been a trick of the light – that, granted, she did not remember turning on, but she might have done it absent-mindedly. Things like that happened all the time.

Surely, there was no cause for worry. She was overreacting. She would turn back up the stairs, go to her office and see that it was just her imagination playing tricks on her. She would continue writing her latest article, and soon Oliver would come home and they would have dinner like they did every night. Everything would be fine, just like any other ordinary…

“Sha-una!” A mocking, high voice sounded directly next to her ear. The woman spun around, a scream on her lips as she faced her attacker, lost her balanced and plunged down the darkened stairs, falling into unconsciousness that would give way only to a nightmare.

Hey there!

I have to say, as a Beatles fan, that this story interested me from the word go. It's short and you create a good character base and develop it to a length for us to familiarise ourselves with the Oliver husband character too. For the most part you keep the reader engaged, after all the plot moves forward. However, I found that it was moving too slow, and I'd blame that on structure.

You see, if you're going to write a horror story - especially if its short - I think you'll need to make more use of short sentences. Most of your sentences are too long. In your opening paragraph, it's not so bad, because the tension is still quite the norm, but as you progress and your protagonist starts to worry, you need to bring pace and fluency with that too. You could put in one sentence flash backs in italics. Like: No. Oliver used black ink. I knew. It just gets it more rhythmic and jumps back and forth without you having to create a structure of telling the reader things in a string of slowly progressing incidents, you know?

By the way, when creating suspense, avoid ellipses. (...) You use it here:

Everything would be fine, just like any other ordinary…

“Sha-una!” A mocking

It just seems cheesy. I'd suggest you break a couple of grammatical expectations and use a "-" instead, as most modern thriller authors would use these days. See what I mean?

The other nit pick I have is that - Yes, a horror should have speculation and uncertainty - you use "surely" far too often. Speculation should be implied and subtle. I feel that here you are pushing it on, pushing us to speculate with your protagonist when we - essentially - don't have anything to speculate with. The mystery seems very lacking also because you seem to give it to us on a plate.

That said, this is a pretty good piece of writing. You demonstrate a good use of grammar understanding, your spelling is very good, your punctuation is very fluent and your word choice is very good. I also found the idea that you left it on such a dramatic note was great. I'm a sucker for cliff-hangers and also the mystery of falling into blackness and an unknown attacker seems to echo the LCD days of the Beatles somewhat. Haha.

Anyway good work. Hope this helps,
Ben.

I cant really say anything that BenFranks didn't allready say. I agree that you should've used shorter sentences. One of yours managed to take up four lines. In places like,

Her heart thudding so loudly in her chest she was sure the sound must be audible from the large hall below the staircase, she stopped in her mad dash and began bending down to pick it up.

you could have used a period and seperated it into two sentences.

I did think it looked gretty good. It deffinately wasn't bad so, good job. It was a fun read, and it kept my intrest.

Hi there!

I'm not going to do a bunch of nit-picks, because 1) you don'd need them--your sentences flow really nicely for the most part, and your grammar and stuff like that generally doesn't leave much to be desired and 2) nit-picks are finicky, and tedious to write and read. So, for both of our sakes, I'm just going to get on to the overall aspects of the piece. ^_^

I, like BenFranks, was intrigued when I read that this was based off of a Beatles song. I love writing from songs--very inspiring, no? I'm also interested since you seem to have taken aspects from the song without using the actual plot from the song in your piece--so the result is a piece that was inspired by the song, without being a fanfic of the song (the song is about a girl running away from home, right?). Very cool! I also like the way you've developed the characters. As Ben said, you give us a surprisingly intimate idea of the characters in a surprisingly small amount of writing. Well done. That's not easy to do, and you've done it quite admirably. I also loved the ending. It was a classic cliffhanger, but it didn't feel cliché at all. It just felt very, very sinister and foreboding. Good job.

That said, I have to point out some things that I didn't like so much about this piece: the first point I'd like to make is that it doesn't feel like horror. Not until the end, that is. I think this is because it's all introspective. Until the very end, all the action is just in her head. You give a sense of back-story, but only through flashbacks. Now, it's not impossible to write a horror-genre piece that's all in one person's head--it's just very difficult. You'd have to develop the voice a lot more, methinks, in order to pull that off. You'd have to really portray her fear by the way it is narrated. One way to do that would be to make there be some shorter sentences. I know both the other reviewers have already told you this, and I feel like I'm not being helpful at all, but I really do agree with them. You don't have to make all of your sentences short if you don't want to (I'm not telling you to change your writing style!) I just think a few one- or two-word sentences throughout the piece would go a long way. As it is, the hairs on the back of my neck don't really stand out until the very end, and since it's supposed to be horror I feel like they should be standing up the whole time.

My second issue with the piece might sound a little silly, but I'll say it anyway: I'm not sure what's going on, exactly. I know, you're probably thinking that it's supposed to be mysterious, and I shouldn't know exactly what's happening... but the problem is that the piece puts a lot of emphasis on back-story and flashback, so I feel like I should understand what that's all about. For example, I want to know why she's about to go thundering down the stairs. If I don't know the reason for her panic, I can think that it might be something as menial as that there's something in the oven that she doesn't want to overcook. Now, I assume something's happened to her husband, and she knows it's bad, but she doesn't know what it is--right? But is that what she's hurrying about? How does she know something's happened to him? I'm just a little confused about the whole thing, I guess. I feel dumb for saying that, but there you go. You might want to make her flashbacks a little clearer and more narrative, because if I don't understand what she's thinking it's hard for me to connect with her emotionally.

Along those same lines, I think you need to decide what reaction Shauna has to this whole thing and stick to it. I may be wrong about this, but it seems to me that for it to be a very horrific horror story, it would be best if the character had very extreme emotions. Extreme fear, extreme curiosity, extreme foreboding... something like that. But right now, she feels sort of neutral. She'll start getting stressed out, then try to calm herself down... and it will work. She'll actually get calmer, which makes me, reading, get calmer too. Not much calmer, but I wasn't all that stressed to start out with. Am I making sense? What I'm trying to say is that you might want the emotional roller-coaster to be a little more roller-coaster-ish. Maybe try and make the ups and down more defined. That could help make the piece more suspenseful. Maybe? Maybe not--just a thought. ^_^

Anyway, on a whole I'm intrigued by this. I think it has a lot of potential, and the end was great. I just think the midsection could be a little more suspenseful, because right now I wouldn't classify this as horror if it weren't for your note. I'd say it was dark, yes, and mysterious, but not particularly horrific.

I hope this helps somewhat! Please PM me or write on my wall if you've got any questions/comments. ^_^

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