Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.
Jude’s eyes slowly faded as the morning light shone through the door. He had been up all night, hating himself. He had killed his whole squad just to keep the information secret: was it worth it? He hoped so. But still, without choice, the mental torture would continue.
The room he was a prisoner in was always the same. But yet it always changed, always revealing situations, always something that would bring pain to Jude. It was like a simulator, and it was used as a form of torture.
So far he had been taken to a desert where he choked on falling sand that was, falling around him, slowly suffocating him to death. He had been in a forest where he was being eaten alive by bears, but not quickly. They slowly ripped off his arms and legs, ate his intestines and gouged out his eyes; though they seemed content with that, and left him to die from blood loss. He had been placed in snow covered mountains, chained to a rock frozen over by ice. Naked, he was left there to die, from hypothermia, or lack of oxygen, whatever came first.
Everything wasn’t real, Jude knew that; yet it felt like it, every tormenting moment of this inhuman torture. It was unbearable, yet his life was not as important as his secret, of the humans and the intergalactic plan. He wasn’t brave, but he wasn’t a coward either. He just knew that his life was worthless compared to the secret.
***
The door creaked open.As before, Quint walked in and his large red eyes pierced at him, staring at his half naked body. He seemed sorry for Jude, in a way, yet he still didn’t stop all of this from happening.
“You are leaving.We are taking you to a higher security facility, were they will get information from you the hard way”, said Quint.Yet he appeared to have left something out, as if he wanted to say more, yet was troubled about whether he should speak.
Jude didn’t respond, though he went willingly. He let himself be lifted up and out of the room, to the large cargo truck. He didn’t remember walking there, though he remembered the blackness because of his blindfold. But he saw a glimpse of the cargo truck; he saw a glimpse of his men’s corpses seated in the back of the truck but with heads hanging askew.
His blind fold was ripped off as he was forced into the dark, enclosed, back of the truck. The large brown doors slammed shut with a bang. He was left alone with the flies; with the rotting corpses with blood stains covering their ripped shirts and sliced up faces; all staring at him, one question in their soulless eyes. Why can’t you tell them? What were our lives worth to you? Are we nothing to you?
***
They had been on the road for hours when Jude heard an explosion outside. The truck came to a lurching stop as he heard blood curdling screams. There was gunfire outside and men screaming commands. Jude expected to be taken out and given over to the attackers, or be quickly escorted away. He just knew he had to keep the information safe.
He lay enclosed in the back of the truck and wasn’t disturbed for what seemed to be an hour. He had to wait with his already dead squad members, his friends, still staring at him, still hating him. He waited as whatever was outside, defeated its enemy. Maybe they were Jude’s friends, but maybe they were not. It might be a Froyer set on the destruction of everything.
He heard light steps walking towards the truck after all the gunfire had ceased. He turned his head towards the sound and as the back door of the truck screeched open to his surprise he was greeted by a familiar face. He smiled at him as the sun suddenly beamed through the now open doors of the truck, sending the flies into a buzz, and revealing the blood and guts, bodies and arms that were all around him.
He was disappointed to find Quint, but there was a boy behind him, smiling.
“Hello Jude, I am Me”.
End of chapter
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139,534 Literary Works • 672,600 Reviews
All right, I'm finally here for a review! Sorry it took so long, I've been busy.
And I forgot for a while. >_<Anyway.
I like it, even if it is a bit disturbing. I read your first chapter first, and I think this one was a vast improvement (the first one was kinda full of typos). I like how you have Jude so coldly rationalize killing his comrades. It really shows what a desperate and hard man he is.
I do have a word of advice on this point, though. In general, characters should be decent people the audience can relate to. Now, I know Jude's callousness is intentional, but I just want to warn you that you run the risk of losing some of your audience because of it. I personally find it interesting, but some people will be turned away by it.
Also, if I were you I would explain why the bodies are in the back of the truck with him I know that they are the bodies of the comrades he killed, but you should probably explain why. Also, I know you sort of did this already, but you could add a few paragraphs about how he is sickened by them and doesn't want to look at what he did, especially when he first gets into the truck and sees them. It's there, but I think it would be more interesting if it was expanded upon. It would also make him more relatable. Just a thought. But definitely explain why the bodies are there.
Oh - also, if they are the bodies of his comrades, and he killed them the night before, they wouldn't have started decaying yet.
I also loved the idea with the simulator - it's such a good method of torture.
Other people got the grammar, so I'll just do one stylistic nitpick:
This sentence is supposed to be powerful and dramatic. By and large, it works, except for this one thing. The problem is that "tormenting" and "torture" sound far too similar, and it's slightly redundant. Just replace one of those two words - I'd recommend changing "torture."
Other than that, I'm liking it a lot. I'd be happy to follow the novel for you and give you feedback as you write it, if you want.
Thankyou sorry for the late thanks
Happy review day! Flite here as requested, I've sort of skimmed the reviews below, but I didn't read them through, so if I repeat anything. I'm sorry. Anyways, I will point things out as I read.
Wording, *coughs* his eyes slowly faded? How does one's eyes fade, I don't think eyes can just disappear into their eyeballs or anything. If they can, please tell me that's an awesome power. (Ok, I'll stop joking.) But you get what I mean, you can't make someone's eye fade.
Falling sand? See the highlighted part, it was the same as the previous part. How else can sand be falling..but around him? instead of saying that though, I think you should have spend that part explaining why the sand was falling. Is it a sandstorm, because I can't quite visualize sand coming down from the skin. Also, not sure is suffocating is the right term here. Unless the sand is very high, I doubt it would suffocate him. It would be painful, and sting his skin and make it raw. But suffocating, I usually associate that with either water or some sort of mental breakdown or phobia.
I know what you mean once again, but pierced at him doesn't flow well. Perhaps get rid of the 'at'?
'He seemed to be sorry for Jude' -> rephrasing, the previous rephrasing is awkward.
I've noticed that you have a tendency to leave thoughts unfinished, actually make that every writer (including me) tends to do that. But I think you can flesh that sentence out a bit more, we don't know about Quint that much, why is he feeling sorry for Jude? A brief word or two might give us some insight.
'were' should be 'where'.
The sentence there is awkward, especially towards the end. The adjectives are placed too close together and hence causing awkwardness in the sentence. You can solve it by omitting the comma, or put an 'and between dark and enclosed and get rid of the comma before back.
The 'the' is not necessary here.
Run-on sentence, this should be split into two. Also, omit the first bolded 'and' it does nothing except making your sentence longer there. Add a comma between 'open' and 'to his surprise'.
Hang on, weren't the blood, guts, bodies and arms already revealed. If you're getting the let the sunlight in, then use the sunlight to highlight how gory and horrible the sight of the blood, guts and body is. Say how the sunlight cast a ghastly sheen across the gleaming intestines (you get what I mean.) Don't repeat things you've said already, don't add in things unless you can make use of it in some way.
I got confused with the perspective here too for as second. Who smiled at who? He smiled at him? Who's he? Who's him?
That is a very nice finish, very very nice. I'm so happy you didn't add any tagging, because it would have ruined it. But nice cliffhanger...I'm curious now. Who's Me? Is it a reflection of Jude? Who is it?
Alright, so overall. Your writing is better than the last chapter, for one you didn't jump around too much. The pace is still a bit fast but at least it actually makes sense, and the transition is much smoother. What you still need to work out is explaining things to us a bit more, I know that you're leaving out some of the answers for suspense. But at the moment, is too disjointed for actually make any sense.
I've mentioned this in the last chapter as well, is slightly better here but still you need to vary your syntax a bit more. Such as your sentence length and openings, a large amount of them opens with the pronoun 'he'. There is actually a lot of 'he' being used in the context as well, try and avoid that as much as possible. It makes your sentences rather flat.
One of the problems I mainly have with this story is that, the readers don't have a background of this. Maybe is because I haven't read the others, but everything is very disjointed (like I said). We know that Jude is tortured, first by aliens and now to somewhere else. We're given no information as to why he's being tortured, I mean some little clue or a little foreshadowing wouldn't hurt. Being completely left in the dark annoys me, but that may be just me.
The starting is also somewhat disconnected with the previous chapter, I don't quite see the link with the previous one. Which brings me the to the question, is the first paragraph really necessary? It tells us nothing about where he is, why he's doing there, except that he's gone through torture via a simulator. But you didn't say where it was, who was doing it. Basically, not relevant to the current plot.
You used a scene break, I assumed that this was a different place, but is it the same place as before? If so, then ignored what I've said so far. But try not use scene breaks unless you're saying that there is a change in location or time, otherwise is misleading. Can we get some insight onto Quint here? I know he's not the MC here, but some insight would be helpful.
Asides from that, nothing else that I haven't already mentioned in this chapter or the previous one. However, the writing is better and the plot is interesting. So keep writing, keep me updated. I would like to see where this goes.
If you have any questions, please PM me.
-Flite
Flite O.o Your reviews are amazinggg
What about my story
haha
I was kinda rude there sorry
Heya, I'm here as requested! Happy Review Day, by the way.
You missed a space between the two sentences.
Wow! I haven't read chapter 1, but after that first paragraph I feel like I'm up to date with what's happening. That's a pretty intense way to keep a secret.
I see that you've missed a space between all your sentences. Maybe this was a formatting problem with the website, I don't know, but fix it. You need a space after a full stop, before the new sentence begins.
It just needs a comma after naked.
The second scene of the chapter is fine, except for one nitpick.
What our our lives worth to you?
You don't need the comma in the middle of this sentence.
What a great way to end the chapter! Nice job.
Thanks!
Hey there! I was lucky in that I got a sneak peak of this chapter. and it's cool to see it all fleshed out. I loved the description of the simulations, gave me chills.
Let me start with my nitpicks:
Is should be were?
One thing I love about reading your work is that it reminds me a lot of my own writing.
I would delete the first comma so it flows better.
I loved this part, but I think the phrase, "though they seemed content with that" is a little weak. Try reworking it to make it sound more interesting, or you could even delete it all together.
There's a tense slip, "didn't" should be "hadn't". Also, I think "All this from happening" could be worded stronger, but that's a minor thing.
[quote]“You are leaving.We are taking you to a higher security facility, were they will get information from you the hard way”,[quote] Two things here. The comma goes inside the the quotations and were should be "where."
I've mentioned my feelings toward "thats" and thought verbs in your work before, just be warned that you have a lot of "He knew that" that I think can be deleted or rephrased so you don't use the words "knew" or "that" it will make your writing stronger.
I was a little confused as to how things connected in this chapter. He just killed his squad, and now he's doing the simulator and then leaving with quint. I feel like you can connect these better by exploring Jude's thoughts as he goes from each of these events. I especially think we need to know more about what he's thinking and feeling about the men he just killed, especially when he's thrown in the truck with their bodies. You mention his feelings, but I think we need more than you're giving us.
It's a great chapter, but it moves really fast, you can slow it down a bit.
Overall though, you've done an amazing job of crafting an intense world with interesting characters and conflicts. I loved your descriptions!
Keep writing!
-Art
Thanks for all the suggestions!