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I just want to start off by saying, 'Traces of Residue' is such a winning title

napalmerski wrote:Of course there were many other figments of my imaginations bustling to and fro, but they don't count.

I'm intrigued...

napalmerski wrote: I've always had an overactive capacity to produce these ghosts that populate the streets, but even when I realized that, they were still there.

Why would they go away just because he realized he can produce them?

napalmerski wrote:Poor Chen, something must have happened to him as a kid or something.

This sounded kind of awkward to me.

napalmerski wrote: She had never been alive. She was one of the ghost-people, not one of the real ones. I had been mistaken, that's all. No reason to grieve or to panic. Relief flooded into me.
I looked around myself with renewed confidence. Humanoid shadows drifted back and forth, and it was time for me to go and find old Daren and play some chess.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down here. If he loved her and found out she was dead, wouldn't he be really, really upset? And if he found out she was never alive in the first place wouldn't he kind of freak out a little. He just fell in love with a ghost/phantom thing. But he feels perfectly fine. Like it's totally normal that he fell in love with a never alive girl. He's just going to go play chess (which is kind of random ).
Show some more emotion here.

Okay well this story kind of confused me. So much happened in such a short time and I never really got to know anyone or anything. I would take some time and add a lot more detail to this story. Give me more of the MC's thoughts and feelings. Show more instead of tell.
I think you've got a good start here and this story could be really grabbing but I think you just need to expand on it more.

-Carly

Hello there!

I'll start by saying this was an interesting read and had me asking a lot of questions, though many of them were left unanswered. That leads me to say this short piece seemed lacking in plot, as you do not explain most of the major aspects you have introduced. Wouldn't he have realised he was touching a ghost? Where did they come from? I have many more questions...

Also, the main character seemed a bit bland to me and this is probably due to his reaction over him finding out his lover was just a ghost. Wouldn't he be upset over this? Perhaps explain to the reader why he isn't upset. To give us a little more information about your main character, how about a small background story? Or more of this opinions on the situation? I would really like to know more about his relationship to the ghosts and if he has had any previous encounters with them; they seemed very intriguing!

I can see potential in this story but it seems to stop a little too abruptly, the chess part at end is a little random (also, who is 'old Darren?) I think you could include the characters thoughts and emotions into this paragraph to help us understand why he is going to play chess at that particular moment, and why he is turning to Darren.

You have a nice writing and I think you should keep improving this as it seemed very interesting!

Keep writing, and please feel free to PM me if you have any questions or want me to review some other work!

-Onyx

Yo,
The young reader tends to go with the flow of the narrative, and identy himself/herself with the main protagonist, and take things at face value.
In a baby-talk narrative, if it for example appeared that the ghosts are not really ghosts, the main protagonist must think "but wait! They are not really ghosts!", or else, another baby-talk mechanism would be someone else telling him,"but Joe! Think! These are not real ghosts!" etc.
Now, if its not a baby-talk narrative, then its up to the reader to decide for himself/herself what exactly is happening. Escpecially in a flash-story format.
A proffesional writer is able to leave enough hints in order to guide the reader to certain conclusions. I am an amateur still and fail in this again and again.

Here is the plot synopsys then
"Mr X had a wife and job, but couldn't take the pressure and became mentally ill.
His mental illness is psychopatic - he retreats into himself in order to deaden his emotions andnot feel pain or anxiety.
He is now a homeless bum with a tin-foil hat on his head.
In order to not feel pain and anxiety, he che fantasy that most people around him are not real, just figments of his imagination.
He only grants reality to people who do not threaten him in any way - Connie, Chen, Daren. Since he hiself, Connie and Chen are homeless psychoes, chances are, so is Daren.
Upon finding Connie dead, Mr X is again threatened with a flood of bad emotions which he does not want to feel.
But he has already structured his life around ways of evading emotional pain. He does his ritual - taking off and replacing his tin foil hat whilst praying to the lord - which produces for him also a short change in perceptions.
This helpes him evade the need to mourn for Connie, because he manages to convince himself that she is also just another irrelevant phantasm, and therefore not real, and therefore no harm done.
The end

many other figments of my imaginations

Should be "figments of my imaginations"

there were many other figments of my imaginations bustling to and fro, but they don't count

Here you switch tenses, from past tense (were, ran, walked) to present tense (don't, run, walk). You need to commit to one tense, whether it be past of present. I must say I definitely prefer past tense ^^

I found myself really confused by this story... Connie's dead? What the heck? You need to clarify.

cheers,
-lena