Insidious Chapter Three- One Month Before(Cont.)

Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for violence.

John stood out on the balcony, his long hair flapping in the wind. He flicked ashes from his menthol out towards the road, watching them as they went from bright red to the gray ash he's come to be accustom to. He sighed as he took the last puff off of it, flicking it in the direction he'd watched the ashes go. He turned around to go back inside, sliding the glass door open.
He walked into the bedroom of Sofie's house, watching her lie there in her sleep. She was completely covered by her blankets, and didn't look like she was breathing at all. John panicked, throwing off the covers and leaning down to administer CPR, but noticed something odd.
The girl lying there wasn't Sofie, but she was familiar. The girl sat up, her ragged clothes barely staying on her scrawny body as she did so. Blood formed on the edges of her mouth and eyes as she started sobbing. Not knowing what to do John bent down to comfort her, but she shoved him away and started rocking.
"Wh-who're you?" his voice came out as a soft whisper, barely audible even to him.
The girl then started giggling, her body shaking uncontrollably with the laughter. She grabbed him by the wrist, her small fingers creating an iron cage he couldn't escape.

"Guess what, John? You're going to die." she smiled at him, blood still pouring from every surface available. She produced a small dagger from the folds of her ragged clothing, swiftly moving it to connect with his throat. She tore through tendons and muscle, leaving the dagger protruding from his jugular. He gurgled on the blood that was filling his mouth, glancing at the girl before the dizziness set in. He hit his knees, unable to do anything but hold his hands to where the dagger was- but he wasn't strong enough to remove it. He tried to utter a cry out, but the dizziness took over him and he fell face-down onto the floor.

John sat up with a gasp, his entire body shaking. He looked over at Sofie's side of the bed, and she was looking up at him.

"It's just a dream, John, it'll be okay. Come on, let's go back to sleep." she grabbed his hand as she said this, rubbing the back of it with her soft hands. He sighed, leaning down to kiss her softly. She kissed him back, wrapping her other arms around to the back of his neck.

John pulled back for a second, fear and torture in his eyes. "Sof... Don't leave. I need you." his voice was shaken with fear, and before she could say a response he kissed her again, letting himself get carried away in the moment.

It's just a dream, it's just a dream, or so he thought.

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Sun Jun 16, 2019 3:11 am

Shady wrote a review...

Casa!

Back for review numero tres. Let's get started...

John stood out on the balcony, his long hair flapping in the wind.

So this just reminded me that I'd like some more physical descriptors of John. I've got a terrible memory so maybe you described him, but I only remember a brief description in chapter one. So like I know he's blonde, but I'm having a hard time envisioning him otherwise. Even if you did describe it then maybe re-enforcing that description would be helpful while we're still in a fairly introductory part of the story?

It's just a dream, it's just a dream, or so he thought.

Hmm... Not sure that I love this so I thought I'd point it out, even though I'm not sure that I have suggestions on how to improve it? Like it's a bit of heavy-handed foreshadowing and to this point we've had a third person limited view -- so we're seeing things solely through the eyes of John up to this point. But the "or so he thought" yanks us back into an omniscient POV and I don't particularly love that.

~ ~ ~

Okay! Overall thoughts time.

So the first thing that struck me is how this absolutely doesn't need to be a separate chapter part. You could make the chapter break in the last chapter just be a smooth transition to upstairs in the text and then put a line break at the end and then go straight into this scene. Last chapter was really short and this one is dramatically short. I'd like them combined better than separate I think.

Same as my previous reviews, I'd like to get a little more into your character's heads and feelings here. I like that he had the nightmare -- clearly there's something bothering him, and idk I have a lot of nightmares so when I run into a character also tormented with nightmares it makes them easier to relate to because I can kinda imagine their head space a bit easier.

But at the same time I don't really know what their relationship is still or why he thinks he's going to die or all of that. The first few chapter it was okay to not have backstory but at this point I want to feel like I know him much better than I know him at this point in the story. I want more depth, more reason to care about him.

Keep writing!

~Shady

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Thu Dec 29, 2016 12:14 am

ExOmelas wrote a review...

RD Review #2

Nit-picks:

gray ash he's come to be accustom to.

This is a bit of messy phrasing. First of all the "he's" is a slip into present tense. Should be "he'd". Secondly, it would technically be "come to be accustomed to." but it might as well just be "gray ash he'd become accustomed to."

The girl then started giggling

"then" sort of reminds me that there is narration here, and takes away from the immersion of the dream. I recommend removing it.

uncontrollably with the laughter

not sure you need "the" there

"Guess what, John? You're going to die." she smiled at him

Remember capital letters after speech unless it's a direct speech word (and in that case it should be a comma before the speech marks rather than a full stop) (that isn't the case here obviously but just for the future)

before she could say a response he kissed her again

probably just "before she could respond he kissed her again"

or so he thought.

Starting to come around on this. It's become a motif now and it builds suspense, because I really want to know what the hell went so horribly wrong for John. I still think it might be worth finding a more subtle way to say this though.

~~~~~

Character: I'm really getting to care about John and Sofie, much more than I did in the prologue. I think it might be worth developing Sofie a bit more. She seems like pretty much just a support for John at the moment. I'd like to know about her own fears and hopes. But it's early days, so plenty of time to get there.

Setting: Well I mean it was in the guy's bedroom so not too much is needed. I still think it would be nice to get some more details of his bedroom initially in chapter 1 but dropping them in in subsequent chapters wouldn't do any harm.

Plot: Yes!!!! I was so excited by this that I forgot to review for a couple of paragraphs. I am so hooked and ready to find out about what is going on, why he got that message from Sofie at the end of chapter 1. Keep it up!

Flow: Much better here. Lots of little details were added in all over the place, like "soft hands", that just made me see what John was focussing on without it being explicitly stated. Brilliant.

Hope this helps,
Biscuits

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Fri Dec 23, 2016 6:20 am

deleted868 wrote a review...

Hey there again Casanova! I think I messed up on my other review talking about the prologue for which I am definitely sorry about. I hope I can help you this time around, ugh. To start off, I love it when writers use dreams and nightmares to reflect "possibilities" or to try to foreshadow what might happen in the future, which it appears you did in this chapter. If you didn't, then sorry for being too analytical XD. Like Kilgharrah said below, you are really good at giving really descriptive details, for which I congratulate you on. That's a very useful skill to be able to have and to use, so bravo on having it. Keep using it in your stories! That nightmare really freaked me out though; I wonder if that girl is gonna show up later on in this story, or if there'll be a reference to her in the future. I guess I'll just have to wait and see, which I'm perfectly fine with doing.

For the most part, your grammar is good, but you didn't capitalize a couple of your sentences, such as "she grabbed his hand" and "his voice was." It doesn't really bother me much, but I just wanted to point that out in case you hadn't noticed; I'm not trying to just point out your mistakes. The only issue I reall have with this is that you repeated a few of the same words in sentences close to each other. For example, you put "He looked" and "she was looking" in the same sentence. You can just change "looked" to "glanced" or different synonym, and that would erase any issue I have with you repeating words. Also, you could change "her soft hands" to "her soft ones" since you already had put "his hand" in that same sentence earlier. I'm sorry if this is annoying; you don't have to do anything, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of advice.

All in all, this is kind of short, but it's a good addition to this story, as since it introduces another nightmare, it engages the reader to think about what it could mean. I'm looking forward to seeing how John's character changes, as I'm guessing he's at least going to develop over the next few chapters. I hope this was foreshadow. I hope I didn't come across as too harsh; I just want to help you. Hope this actually did help! Good job on this!

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Wed Nov 30, 2016 9:54 pm

Eternity wrote a review...

Hello, there! Kilg here for a review~

To be caught up, I read over the other chapters to make sure I knew what exactly was going on. I really like this piece; is a very well written, but I have a few suggestions of my own that may help you in the slightest bit.

Since I didn't review Prologue-Chap. Two:
Here's my outlook on this story~

You start off nicely, describing the nightmare he has in the Prologue. Then you jump to reality. Personally, I've noticed that prologues get overlooked and/or skipped when going over a story. If it's something that's important to the story, I would suggest combining the prologue and chapter one together so they get a hint at first, and continue reading if they want.

After chapter one, you jump to a month before. This threw me off slightly because normally flashbacks happen all within the same chapter, or start off the next chapter and continuously build throughout the chapters. I like the detail you place within this story, but I think the story could be better if there was more. Try describing characters more and give a description of their surroundings.

I also think these chapters are fairly short, and I guess it works if you're trying to make the reader want to read more. Leaving the reader off the edge of their seat is a good thing, of course, but when the chapters begin to become short, it may also frustrate the reader; along with progressively writing smaller chapters.

Just quickly looking at word count~
Chapter one is 892 words.
Chapter two is 536 words.
Chapter three is 475 words.

I feel like chapter two and three could also be combined, or apart of a "Part 1, Part 2" combination. Considering they're both pretty short and the fact that they seem to relate to each other.

On a different note, let's talk about just this chapter.

Grammar-

She was completely covered by her blankets, and didn't look like she was breathing at all.

You can get rid of the comma after blankets.

For grammar, that's all I noticed.

Things I really enjoyed:

She produced a small dagger from the folds of her ragged clothing, swiftly moving it to connect with his throat. She tore through tendons and muscle, leaving the dagger protruding from his jugular. He gurgled on the blood that was filling his mouth, glancing at the girl before the dizziness set in.

Now that's the type of detail I'm talking about. I love detail like this. So well done!

I really enjoy the flashback kind of setting within this story so far and I hope to see the story progress into something great! ~~Not that I do not think it isn't, already. I enjoy reading this.~~

Well, that's I have for you today! Keep on writing, dear!

Love you~

~Kilg

Young Writers Society

Insidious Chapter Three- One Month Before(Cont.)

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