Like A Snake in the Dark

Hi Babz, here to review like I promised. I hope I help, and if you've got any questions contact me through PM or the chatroom. I will be more than willing to answer.

He waited like a snake in the dark, to the left of the door.

I would put a comma in here, otherwise the line seems long and rushed. Also, to give more affect to your opening line, I would seperate this from the subsequent sentences. It's quite a good hook, but it loses its purpose if you squeeze it into a large, overbearing paragraph.

Or perhaps some kind of freakish octopus, with his orange prison uniform, his hair slick with grease and his eyes just slightly too wide.

I quite liked this line, the comparison is interesting. However, I'm sure you could find a better synonym for 'freakish.' It made the line seem somewhat childish. Also... a snake and an octupus aren't very visually alike, so the comparison doesn't seem to fit.

Two weeks ago when he began had begun his daily vigils, his senses were as sharp as blade.

The sentence was a little choppy. These corrections should fix it. Also, what daily vigils? Elaborate. I'm assuming it's his habitual hiding in the darkness, but this is not made clear until much later on.

Now he drifted in and out of a waking twilight of sleep.

'Twilight' seems redundant here. When I read it, I was left wondering why the word was there. How about 'drifted in and out of a waking, fitful sleep'?

Shadows shifted around him every so often, sometimes he could hear snatches of songs or his mother’s laughter or a child’s screams or he’d smell the unmistakeable scents of sex or drink or all the 'uncles' from his childhood.

Either seperate this line as a new sentence, or cut it our altogether. It's a fairly bland description of his surroundings, so at best you could improve and ellaborate. What ever you do, make it seperate after the 'often.' The first half of the sentence is unrelated to the next, and read like broken, incomplete thoughts.

Also, the punctuation around uncle should be inverted commas ('') and not speech marks (" ") . As uncle is a quote, inverted commas should be used.

Or he’d hear the voice of the “uncle” he hated most, the one who stank of perfume and femininity and had long and broken nails

.

He spoke like a woman too, soft and slow and cold.

Same thing about the inverted commas as well. Also, I adored this line. Very nice.

Or he would feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise and he would feel some inner voice telling him that Brady, poor fat Brady, had got up and away from the wall behind him in the isolated farmhouse, and was right this second reaching out with his arm, getting closer and closer, every second that he spent focussed on the door Brady was shambling closer, meaty fist already clenched.

Ramble alert. This sentence lasts far too long. I know you were probably trying to create suspense, but long sentences created exactly the opposite effect. Short, staccato sentencing is more what you're looking for.

Overall Impression: Well, it took a few reads to fully understand, and I'm not exactly a fan of reading cannibalism. However, you had some very cleverly written sentences and I'll praise you for that. No spelling or grammar mistakes either, which is very good.

Things to Improve On: Your use of commas. Be careful of when and where to put them in. If it helps, read the sentence out loud and insert a comma where you take a natural pause. Also, try not to make sentences so long. This encourages readers to skim, and they may miss something important and not comprehend what is going on.

We also got a very minimalist description of our MC's surroundings. Don't allow your story to float in an empty space of nothingness, get some description in there! I know you're perfectly capable, because some of the description we got was very nice.

Okay Babz, hope this helped, keep writing!

-Moo