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Young Writers Society


12+ Mature Content

Of Dante and Silken Fire

by TashHill


This perilous silence is enough to hold me an enraptured prisoner within the iron depths of your fiery irises. Burn and scald they do; your eyes, as you captivate me with that scorching stare . . . and I can’t look away. A tortured scream and an excruciated gasp are torn through my throat as if the very fires of hell were licking at my skin. Looking around me in a horror filled trance I realize, ‘this is my perdition.’

Your nails are clawing through me and under my skin, rending the once whole plains of my porcelain flesh into bloody ribbons. The red claret is joined by the swiftly flowing trails of liquid salt that seem to burn and sizzle on a downward journey. A smirk curves your luscious lips as a cruel laugh rumbles from the confines of your heavy chest. The sound lashes at me and caresses me – delicious as it is. Even now I cannot overlook your cloying splendour –an Adonis among men.

I try again to close my eyes – to look upon anything other than your graceful frame –but just as it always is, I cannot. Your grip tightens as if you had read my thoughts and were set upon quashing any notions of freedom. No matter how desperately I cling to them, your overpowering strength is enough to tear them away. It’s as if you have control of not only my physical being, but over even my internal struggle. You build the fear and then strip away any vestiges of remaining hope within me.

Grace – it seems –has deserted me, savagely tearing away my faith like some sick joke. Fate has broken me, and destiny has enslaved me. Bereft am I, at their loss - their absence leaving me void and hopeless and hollow. Curse at you and curse at fate and curse at destiny, I do. But held beneath you I remain, crying and screaming and breaking. When will it end? Will it ever? Questions that are as desperate as they are hopeless, bound to remain unanswered.

Desperation grows within like a rapidly expanding spread of mould upon cheese left too long trapped in the scorching gaze of the overhead ball of spitting flames. Perhaps I should have saved myself . . . or at least sent out a plea to some superhero, somewhere . . . to rescue me.

But it is too late . . . far, far too late for regrets and thoughts of saviours in spandex and flowing capes. There is no saviour to be called, no one to hear that most desperate of pleas. So with a tortured cry that echoes off of the whitewash ceiling, I simply . . . wait. And wait. And then wait some more. But what I am waiting for? Not freedom, no, definitely not that. I wouldn’t know what to do with freedom. Maybe just a peace of mind – if that’s even possible. Perhaps I could simply settle for a mediocre existence in which I am neither blissfully happy nor overcome with sadness.

You stole that, upon snake tongue and deceitful eyes that seem to glow with an angry ember; an ember that moves beneath my soul with the captivating allure of a thousand Sirens. But like those most treacherous of beings, there lies a danger that sulks and lurks behind the shining perfection of your outer shell. It is as if your external faultlessness leaves no room for internal transcendence. And it leaves me numb in my knowledge.

“I love you,” a whisper spoken on a broken tongue as your eyes continue to bore into my own - flame and passion and heat. “I love you,” words that force themselves out of my gaping maw and into the dense air that surrounds us. “I . . . “I can no longer speak. Silenced by you; silenced by my own captivated horror and silenced by your screaming silence.

I look at my captor . . . and the devil looks back.


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767 Reviews


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Sat May 17, 2014 2:28 am
SpiritedWolfe wrote a review...



Hello there, Wolf here for a review.
Can I just say wow. That was beautiful. I am not usually one to like these types of stories, but you convey this emotion from this character so brilliantly, it's impossible not to like it. Just the way it's structured, going into so much details of how this character struggles internally and her surroundings is just amazing.
Your analogies (is that what they're called?) are very well written, using the things most people use to try and comfort themselves when they are in distress.
Try as I might, I can barely find anything wrong with it. Your grammar (as far as I know) is practically flawless, and just making a message: well you blew that out of the water.
One thing that I thought sort of halted the mood was this line: "...mould upon cheese left too long..."
I don't understand what you were trying to convey here. You had a nice flow going, a beautiful rhythm almost, and when I saw that line I had to double back; thinking "What? What does cheese have anything to do with this?"
Sorry I couldn't have been more helpful, but sometimes hearing a bit of praise is good. You're a beautiful writing, I can't wait to see more of your works!
~Wolfare




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Tue May 06, 2014 11:54 am
Crosa wrote a review...



Hi Crosa here for review:

To start with great piece, the depth of emotion that is consistently portrayed to the reader is astounding. Your ability in addition to that to captivate the reader with the narrators inner conflict is brilliant. It creates a story that not only nails the torment and frustration felt about the very intimate feelings of the narrator but makes the reader personally invested as well. Your ability to tie those concepts together is a very enviable one, often writers as they dig deeper into a characters inner feelings unconsciously separate the reader.

On that note though I do have a few suggestions:

1. Some structural things:

I would fiddle with the first two paragraphs they read well now but I think it could flow better. I would swap a few of the sentences around so that the description of the facial features are closer together allowing a picture in the readers mind eye to be created as a whole. I would try something like this:

"A tortured scream and an excruciated gasp are torn through my throat as if the very fires of hell were licking at my skin. Looking around me in a horror filled trance I realize,

‘this is my perdition.'

This perilous silence is enough to hold me an enraptured prisoner within the iron depths of your fiery irises. Burn and scald they do; your eyes, as you captivate me with that scorching stare . . . and I can’t look away.

Your nails are clawing through me and under my skin, rending the once whole plains of my porcelain flesh into bloody ribbons. The red claret is joined by the swiftly flowing trails of liquid salt that seem to burn and sizzle on a downward journey.

A smirk curves your luscious lips as a cruel laugh rumbles from the confines of your heavy chest. The sound lashes at me and caresses me – delicious as it is. Even now I cannot overlook your cloying splendour –an Adonis among men."

I just think that way it is one physical description after the next, not breaking them apart at the beginning, it makes the image created stronger.


2. I also don't like the sentence "Fate has broken me, and destiny has enslaved me" I like the emotion invoked but I think it could be written more powerfully. I would try:

"Fate has broken me and destiny enslaved"

Additionally I would loose the "and"s between void,hopeless and hollow again creating a more powerful sentence I believe. It instigates greater feeling to the reader via pace.

This is actually relevant on a few occasions, instead of over using (which I think you have done on purpose here and there) I would suggest not using it all. So " - flame and passion and heat" would read, "flame; passion; heat" again coupling pace with the words to create a stronger emotional from the reader.

3. I'm not a big fan of the "mould upon the cheese" I think it needs something that doesn't evoke a "seeping / creeping" feeling or even something more disastrous? Maybe:

"...grows within like disease left to long trapped in..... "

Also not a big fan of the the word spandex, changes the mood of the paragraph I think maybe the word sigil could work though?

4. I would also change the last bit "silenced by your screaming silence" to "silenced by your screaming stare." I think that would reintroduce the strength of the stare, the close proximity of the two characters and it also finishes off all the great work you have done descriptively about the face of the devil earlier on.

Excellent ending too. Perfectly structured and really delivered to the reader well.

I hope this is helpful and received with the constructive intention it has. I tend not to nit pick over spelling or anything so hopefully that's not what you were after.

This is well written and my suggestions really are minor ones.

Fantastic story and please keep writing it was a pleasure to read.

Thanks,

- Crosa :)




TashHill says...


Thank you very much, well it was not hard to get the emotions through %u2013 it%u2019s a personal experience after all. Your comments will help me make this better for an upcoming competition. I do appreciate and agree with the constructive criticism, some points I will take into consideration but others I believe that the way I have written things are for a specific reason.
My first point is the fact that I never put all the physical descriptions in a row because I believe it usurps the flow and a lot of readers have the tendency to skip over long descriptions of a character%u2019s physical looks.
I will take into consideration the %u201CFate has broken me, and destiny has enslaved me,%u201D line. But all I would do is change the order of the words. The way that sentence is formed is to set it apart from the rest. That sentence is written word for word in my journal and is probably going to remain the way it is. I understand your point, though.
The same goes for the repetitive use of %u201Cand%u201D between words. I have indeed done this on purpose as this piece is to be read aloud for the competition and it makes it both flow more and adds a kind of poetry element to the writing. Although technically it is incorrect from a grammar standpoint, this is a creative writing piece.
And the mould upon cheese line I completely agree with you on that point. I hav already reworked that line %u2013 it simply didn%u2019t fit in with the rest of the piece. Also the spandex thing, I do want to work on that line, but I am not sure how to go about changing that, I think I will have to completely change it.
The very last sentence, I cannot make it to the %u201Cscreaming stare%u201D as that is not what I was intending to get across. She is not silenced by her lovers%u2019 eyes but by her actual silence. She loves this woman but also hates her with a passion that exceeds far beyond a physical aspect. Have you heard the term %u201Csilence speaks louder than words?%u201D all that line conveys is that they are communicating on a mental level. Another point, they are physically close but they are worlds apart.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to review the piece, it truly helped me out. And please do not take the fact that I have decided not to change certain aspects, this is in no way me being an egotistical writer, but me standing by my own work. I fully appreciate the fact that it is creative critisicm and I in no way begrudge you for your ideas .


Thanks,

- Tash xx



Crosa says...


Thanks for the feedback, Im glad I could help you in some way.

More than anything, any suggestions made a way for me to simply pull those areas "into the light" and thereby encourage maybe further consideration about them.

Im glad you are standing by your work, its wonderful and you should. And im also glad that you take my points as suggestions only, as they are of course intended.

Cheers.

-Crosa




There's a Brazilian things you could write about. You just gotta pick Juan.
— Hattable