Young Writers Society

If you missed the first part of this chapter, you can find it here:
topic75972.html



I decided to let him make the first move; I always hated to give up the advantage of responding rather than opening up myself to attack. It appeared that he was too. I edged to the side, and he responded by circling round me, and then suddenly, he lunged. I jumped back into the dumpster, hard, but managed to dodge around his knife. With my other hand, I slammed it into the brick wall, and he dropped it. I smiled for a moment, triumphant, before he hooked his elbow into my cheekbone, narrowly missing my eye. Pain burst through my face, and I swore, my hand instincively flying up. My knife clattered to the concrete and I swore again. He whirled around and threw a punch that I ducked under. I took the opportunity to slip out another knife, a longer bowie that was too long to fit on my forearm. He'd committed too much and staggered into where I'd been. I came up around him and slung the blade out in front of him. Both hands went up, and his eyes went wide.

“Okay, okay, lady, you win. S’yours.” His eyes dodged around, searching for some way of escaping. I looked at him warily, and then lowered my knife. I made a motion for him to leave. It was lucky to have two fights where no one had to be hurt; I might as well take advantage of it. He scurried away and I turned back to my treasure, smiling at my fortune.

I almost didn’t hear the rasp of metal against leather, and barely turned in time to catch his knife on mine. The weight of his strength against mine was hard to hold up against; he was much stronger. I quickly pulled my knife back and I jumped out of range to let his weapon fall before I stepped in and quickly finished it with a slash down from his throat to his stomach. It was a fluid movement, almost a reflex. Blood gushed from the rip in his shirt, and he crumpled to the ground. I could hear the red trickle into the dirt, and tried to ignore it. I flicked my blade up and wiped it off on a rag from my pocket, reserved just for this. I sheathed it, and bent down next to him. I checked his pulse. There wasn't one. So much for a semi-peaceful morning.

---

His pockets rustled underneath my fingertips. So far, my search really hadn't turned up much. I'd checked his boots, pant pockets, the pantlegs that had been rolled up to keep out the mud, and had only found a rusty knife tucked into his boot. His clothes were too filthy for any real purpose. All the decent clothes were in the dumpster bag already; the clothes he wore were more rags than anything else. It seems that most of his valuables were already in the dumpster. That was fine with me; I hadn't expected much, and I was still happy about the legstrap. My hand felt something knobby in his pocket. I wrestled it out, twisting my hand this way and that before it finally came out. It was a locket, rusted. I knew what probably lay inside: some tiny picture of the man I had just killed with his wife, solemn and posed like statues. Curious, I still opened it, and instead found pictures of a young girl, probably around six: a daughter. She was smiling, obviously candid, and held hands with the man who was currently bleeding underneath me. She had a gap in between her teeth, where she was starting to lose her baby teeth. The picture looked recent, with a brown, polluted sky in the background. I snapped it closed and dropped it down to the ground next to him. I got to my feet and gathered up my pack, making sure that nothing would make noise when I moved; there was nothing else here for me.

The disposal of the man didn't bother me; because of the mass homicide running through the streets, it had become custom to drag bodies to alleyways, sometimes dumping them in the sewers or rivers to get rid of the smell. Sometimes, if they were messed up enough or in enough pieces, they would lie where they were killed. The pigeons usually dealt with them pretty quickly, and soon, they were vague stains on concrete. Not that you could see even those under all the grime the city had accumulated. But this guy was easily taken care of. I dragged him to the side of the alley so no one would trip over him. Little human courtesy; least we still had that. Or I did, anyways.

The sky wasn't much lighter outside the alleyway. It was still technically night, because I had a habit of rising before the sun. Well, I didn't actually really have any regular sleeping habits, but when I was even the tiniest bit consistent, I got up then. Looking down at my prize, I decided to head home to strap it on. It wouldn't be safe to make myself vulnerable here.

Home was somewhat close, and I moved quickly through all the winding streets and alleys, so it wasn't long before I got there. Our particular hide-out was in an old cellar I'd discovered. It kept cool, even in the summer, though sometimes it seemed like summer all year round. I missed the days when we had something to protect us from the sun. Now, it just beat down on our skins like a big brand of light, and it burnt us and marked us as forgotten. Now, I holed up where I wouldn't blister and find my skin raw. Our street was in an almost residential part of the city, so there were houses with opportunities for us like cellars and very little life otherwise. Though, it was kind of cramped. I sighed as I undid the strap hiding my key underneath my shirt and as I hefted up the wooden doors leading to our home, the breath whooshed from my body. The hinges creaked, and I reminded myself to tell Leam that we needed oil. Any unwelcome sounds, especially those coming from own home, might seem small but were extremely dangerous. Seems like Leam had gotten a bit too relaxed in the past couple days, when she'd been away scavenging. Might have to have a talk with him about that.

A blast of air welcomed me home. The cold staleness was welcome, and I breathed in the familiarity through my nose. The cellar doors creaked closed, and I winced. That really needed to be fixed. I locked the doors with my key and then did up the chain. We only used the chain when we were both back, and Leam rarely ever left without me. I tugged on the chain once, and satisfied with the security, started making my way down the narrow staircase. There weren't any light, but I knew the place pretty well. It was home, after all.

All right, here as requested!

Okay, so looking back at your first post again it looks like you cut out the last part of it and plugged it in here? At first I thought I was having a dreadful case of deja vu, but it looks like I'm not going crazy just yet.

I'd say the main thing I noticed about this piece is that it felt like there's a lot of telling going on, and it was very passive. I'm not getting a lot of connection with the MC, and the propulsion from the beginning, in your other post, is losing its momentum and slowing down. It's one thing to just narrate exactly what's going on during an intense action-filled scene, but after she kills the man, it feels like you continue with that narration style, when that's the time when it could really use some more personableness, some more insight into the character. So far, even though this is in first person, I feel like the MC is a vessel to tell a story, instead of the protagonist who's actually participating and playing the key role in the story. She's more of a robot than a human, it feels, and while the setting seems to be a tough one where people have to shut off their emotions to keep themselves safe, there's still a lack of thoughts and feelings that I'd expect.

That was honestly the only issue I noticed; the rest of your writing is excellent and I'm looking forward to reading the next chapter and maybe getting to know more about this place and the people in it. I'm sorry this isn't much of a review, but I can't find anything else to talk about, it's just too good.

Thanks for the read, and keep up the great work! Cheers. (:

Coraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal. Hi.

Thankfully, you've only got one review so far, so hopefully, I will be of some use. On more of a negative note though, this is pretty short, so I'm not sure how much I'll have to say. We'll see. xD

To be honest, I don't really have much to add from last time. Like usual, your writing style is wonderful and has a natural flow to it. None of your words, descriptions or anything feel forced, which is always refreshing to see. Like I said in the last review, I think that this definitely does have buckets of potential, so I'm certainly interested in seeing where you're planning on taking it. So far, so good!

One thing that I would like to bring up though is that sometimes, parts of this can sound a bit wordy at times. For example, you seem to have quite a few long sentences as well as a lot of commas in those sentences. Although most of the time, the flow was good, because of the wordy sentences, the flow was sometimes disrupted. To be honest, the only suggestion I have for you is to read over this again and try and see if you can notice where the wordy parts are. It would be best if you read this aloud actually because you'll notice awkwardness easier then. As a whole though, it's not too bad.

The only other thing I really have to critique is that I kind of felt like you overdescribed the action scene - where the MC was fighting against the other dumpster guy. I think this may just be because we left off at the fighting scene last time, and it continued into this part. That probably made the scene feel much longer. I do think that you had a lot of things going on though and it was hard to keep up with it all. One second, she was hitting him, the next, she ducked, the next, he jabbed at her e.t.c. and it got a bit confusing after a while. I would suggest something, but I honestly won't be of any help. I absolutely suck at fight scenes. I do think you should maybe try and make the actions a bit smoother and easier to follow though... somehow. x3

The last thing I have to add is what Ranger said actually. I'm still not feeling a connection to your MC. I know you said that you want it to seem like she's purposely cutting out emotions for them to be released later, but even if you are doing that, you need to somehow still make us readers feel connected to the MC. To be honest, I think it's going to be a really hard thing to do, especially considering you're doing the whole withdrawing emotions thing. It's just that, right now, like Ranger said, this all feels a bit passive. Hmmm... I suppose what you could do is something like create emotional scenes, but don't have your MC react to them much. For example, have her maybe pass her childhood home and notice it, but at the same time, have her avoid getting emotional about it... It's hard.

Nonetheless, so far, so good! Keep up the good work, Coral.

Keep writing!

xoxo Skins

If you are trying to keep the MC's emotions withdrawn, be very careful because it can seem like the character has no feeling, therefore the reader resents the MC. Maybe, (justa' idea, probably a bad one) you can give the MC false emotions and then reveal the actual feelings at the end, OR maybe you could put more description in how the MC feels, because even a neutral character has feelings, give dramatic examples of emotion, then have the MC be very nonchalant-----you really have to play it out, OR maybe.... you can have the MC slowly show emotions, have the MC grow with the story. I am no expert, but as a reader and writer, these are my thoughts. GOOD-LUCK!!!!! Keep writing.