Suspect 009
Maybe he’d drink some Earl Grey tea today…
Lieutenant Kasimir Alexander Heimm was staring out of his car window, his eyes wandering from one shop window to another... There were Christmas lights hanging from some of the shops even though it was the 3rd of December. He shook his head and looked for tea leaves on the shop windows, trying to ignore it. He hated untimely (not to mention unnecessary) things. He’d buy some nice Earl Grey tea and settle in his cozy sitting room with it and his newspaper, instead of his regular coffee. He needed a change.
After all, it was what he always did after killing someone... Plus, today was rather different too, wasn’t it…?
He sighed and looked at the ceiling, then at the numerous badges on his jacket lapel... One badge for every five people… He had 5 on him now... And this last one would get him the sixth badge, and be promoted to a Colonel at the mere age of 28, with an incredible success rate of 99%.
No one ever talked about the 1%... The mere mentioning of it made Kasimir’s blood boil.
The driver eyed him suspiciously, and raised his eyebrows, asking a silent question...
He shook his head and held up his hand. He was quite fine… For now, at least. He’d try to kill this one quickly, rather than make a show of it like he did last time… It was pouring rain outside... As if on cue, the car came to a halt and the driver ran out to open his door and handed him an opened umbrella, and Kasimir stepped out…
There were five men in police uniforms waiting for him outside, under a nearby shop’s awning, and when they caught sight of him, they saluted him, and then walked towards him with their hats in their hands, despite Kasimir being noticeably younger.
“Lieutenant Kasimir Alexander Heimm… Thank you for assisting us… We just were not able to get him without you…” said the oldest, sounding his name as if it were some sort of holy word from the Bible. It made Kasimir feel disgusted.
They walked towards the apartment now, talking to each other as they walked.
“You must not thank me until I finish the mission, Franz… There is always a chance of failure… (Here Kasimir smirked softly...) Now, do please tell me about him, the Suspect 009...” Kasimir replied coldly, his narrow green eyes surveying the surroundings carefully... They were in the courtyard of an abandoned , bleak apartment, 15 stories high… Police tape had been stuck everywhere in a 200 meter radius of the apartment, and better yet, a few sniper rifles could be seen from the windows of the neighboring apartments… There was a crowd leaning in for a better look behind the police tapes, and a rough voice could be heard yelling at them to back off.
Seriously, was the suspect 009 that dangerous? Kasimir almost felt worried for a second, but his confidence got the best of him. He was 1st Lieutenant Kasimir Alexander Heimm, and he was always successful. This would only be slightly harder than his previous kills, if it really was any different.
“Yes, of course… We’ve been pursuing the suspect for the last two years, and so far, he has killed almost 10 people without leaving any trace of himself. No fingerprints, no hair, sperm, nothing at all. In fact we were told that he was a male by a passing elderly man who had witnessed the crime. Needless to say, he was found dead after a few days, too. The victims were often found brutally mutilated and hanging from the walls of the place they were killed, and the suspect would always write “Find me if you can” on their heads with blood…“ Franz shivered and showed him some pictures of the last victim found, a little girl about 7 years old, only a month ago… Kasimir looked at the pictures in disgust and turned away… The only thing he would never be able to look at was the corpse of a child...
“Why haven’t you found him yet…? You’ve had 2 years… 10 murder cases…” Kasimir asked bitterly. He found it quite unbelievable.
“Sir… I haven’t understood that myself. The crimes always seem to take place in the… shadier parts of the city, and there were long gaps of a few months between each murder case, allowing them to erase any traces they might have left.
“I see… And the suspect is in there…?” Kasimir fought hard to control the tremble of his voice, still unable to wrap his head around what Franz had just said.
The men nodded.. “He has taken a hostage too, a twenty year old woman..”
‘Right… Please excuse me…” Kasimir pulled out a Glock 19 from his jacket pocket, dropped the umbrella and ran inside the building, ducking below the police tape swiftly.
The men’s jaws dropped. Who would use a 20th century firearm in the year 2037?
End of chapter
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137,703 Literary Works • 672,063 Reviews
Hey BlackCatXx!! RagingLive here to offer a review and to say a belated welcome, welcome, to YWS!
First of all, I absolutely love mystery/suspense and so I was pleasantly surprised to find a slight element of that in your story. However, I did find a few inconsistencies that could probably be easily resolved.
You seem to use a lot of ellipses, and while that can be good, I feel as though you are overusing them in places where they don't belong. The above example is one of them. The snippets of sentences I put up are really two separate sentences, but just confused by the use of ellipses. It would read much easier if you just places a period since one sentence is his state of being - what he's doing. The other is telling you about his observations.
The use of parentheses here makes you piece look unprofessional and a bit amateurish. I would suggest that you use hyphens instead.
'With it' feels a bit redundant to me, I suggest that you strike that and rephrase to something along the lines of:
"He'd buy some nice Earl Grey tea and settle in his cozy sitting room with his newspaper,"
Sounds the same but different, no?
More and more ellipses. In this snippet I encourage you to strike all of them! To make it more dramatic, phrase like this:
"After all, it was what he always did after killing someone. Plus, today was rather different anyway wasn't it?"
Okay, here I was a little confused about the driver. I had to reread and draw some conclusions that I'm sure could just as easily be cleared up in the story. You mentioned he was in a car, but was he stopped at a light? I had assumed he was driving, so telling about someone else kind of threw me. Maybe say that he was in a cab and then later mention his cabbie throwing him a look. And I'm also begging you to please get rid of the ellipses at the end of this sentence, they just don't belong.
I already told you about your parentheses, so I'm going to demonstrate how to properly use hyphens when interjecting a spoken phrase.
"There is always a chance of failure" - here, Kasimir smirked softly - "Now, do please tell me about him,"
To make it look more professional, maybe write out the 15 as fifteen. You'll also want to change the ellipses to a period.
The ellipses are again just cluttering up the sentence and making it hard to read. Please just erase them altogether.
This sentence was a little out of order. He wouldn't duck under police tape after he got inside of the building if there's a 200 meter radius of police tape around it. 1) Pull out his Glock 19. 2) Drop the umbrella. 3) Duck below the police tape. 4) Run inside the building.
Also, concerning the Glock 19, those are still in production today, in the 21st century. I also found your use of ellipses disturbing. I only found a handful of places where ellipses would fit properly and I suggest you reevaluate your story for these mistakes. Everyone has their weaknesses. Mine are commas, yours seem to be ellipses. I couldn't place all of the examples of misuse here, but if you do have any further questions, please feel free to contact me via PM or in the comments below.
I hope you don't think I'm some criticizing meanie, because I really did love this story. I hope I get to read more, and if possible, I want to get the second chapter read today.
In the mean time, keep writing and keep on smiling!!
~RagingLive
Hello, BlackCatXX! Welcome to YWS!
I'm here for a quick review.
burninhell already gave you some of the things that caught my eye. Except, I don't agree with her/him about Kasimir's name, though. His name seems fine to me, probably because my own name slows down quite the crowd. Moving on from that.
You really ought to cut down on the ellipses. They keep making me feel as though the flow of the story is lost again and again, whenever you use them. It hampers your experience somewhat. With your story as fast-paced as you have it here, it would have the best effect to have everything tightly packed, and the ellipses sort of prevent that, if you know what I mean. It's like these blocks of untimely (not to mention unnecessary) breaks. The reader would feel the pull of the moment, so to speak, if the action came in jolts (simple sentences ending LARGELY in periods) than it does now in this largely cushioned effect the ellipses produce.
You also need to cut down on the ellipses in dialog, because the way they are, they feel like the speaker stopped after every few words, which I'm sure is not the case.
Apart from the ellipses, you have to work on some other things as well.
So, I'm sure it would look a lot better if you removed the parentheses from the Kasimir smirking portion. You could close the speech marks, say he smirked, and open the speech marks again for him to say what he says next without much of a problem. It's not necessary to have the entire speech in one piece even when the last part of it is succeeded by some descriptions/non-speech part of the story.
Two things about this part. The first thing is, you might have noticed this when reading stories that when a character quotes something in the middle of something they say, the quote comes in a set of speech marks different from the ones that were used to open their speech. Mostly seen these days are double quotes outside and single quotes inside. The other way around works as well, but you've got to stick with one of the two. My English teacher made a mighty big deal out of it before my big exams, and I'm not blabbering about this just because of that. I'm saying this because it just looks better that way. The second thing has to do with the wording. Brutally mutilated and hanging from the walls of the place they were killed. Are you sure you're not missing something here? I sure feel like that. Maybe say, "...the place where they were killed..."? Sound better?
Hardcore advice, BlackCatXX, read it all aloud.
That's pretty much as much nitpicks I could get my hands on. Most of this is pretty good stuff, and all you need to do is brush it up some more and you could have the perfect story. I'll be moving onto chapter 2 now, and I really hope I can help you out more.
~ConfusedGlasses
Thank you, thank you so much for taking the time to review my work! I was rereading the story today and I totally saw what you meant by the ellipses ruining the pace of the story. I changed allll the ellipses I say after that, so that's one thing I have handled.
And yes xD The comma thing. I actually knew there was something else I had to place there,but it just wouldn't come to me. So I let it go. I'll keep that in mind, too.
Anyways, I really appreciate that you took the time to drop a review, and a long and elaborate one at that too. Thanks so much~ Reviews always make my day; it feels great to know there's people out there who like my stories.
~Blackie
Glad I could be of help!
This is a very good piece of writing!
I find myself desperately intrigued about suspect 009. And you have me wishing that there was more here to read so I can see what happens next. I'm also curious about what happened before, that mystery 1%. But all in all I was gripped.
There are only a couple of things that I would suggest for improvement, and neither make a massive difference. The first thing is that I found Kasimir's name a bit of a mouthful, not Kasimir, but you call him by his whole name a few times, it's not major, it's just takes away from the fast paced start up that you have here a little bit. That's only my opinion anyway, and would do little to discourage me from reading more of this story.
The other thing is that you use ellipsis' quite a lot, I'm not sure if this was intentional to maybe try and slow the quick pace that you've set starting this story, but maybe using less of them would help to improve the overall effect. Again, only my opinion and it doesnt take anything away from the story
But overall you have the beginnings of a great story, I look forward to reading more
Thank you so much <3 I was getting nervous after a few days of waiting for reviews. Pheeew!
Thanks for the tips you gave~ I'll be sure to employ them in my next chapters!
Awesome! I look forward to reading them