The soft click of a pistol behind me, the pistol, met my ears with a whispered promise. Everything around me; the autumn leaves falling to the ground, the desperate voices of all those calling my name, the strong hand yanking me back by the hair, had all slowed down. I guess the last moments of a person's life last longer because they feel more sacred, more beautiful and sad than all the rest of the billions of seconds that ticked by.
He bent over beside me and yelled something into my ear. I forced my mind to come back to the present and concentrate.
"Yes, or no?" he insisted. I could feel my Lord coming closer, beckoning my soul to Him.
At this second, at this small slice of my existence, life seemed overwhelmingly simple. All the sounds and sights that were constantly bombarding my senses now seemed like a small gift, a token, instead of a curse. The gravel scratched my knees as I was kneeling there, contemplating what was going to be and what was to come.
"Yes, I am a Christian, and I forever will be," I proclaimed boldly. He straightened up and I looked to the sky. The clouds were glimmering with the hope of an upcoming sunrise; a sunrise that I would never see.
"Lord, receive my soul," I whispered. The trigger was pulled, and I flew away.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,018 Literary Works • 672,856 Reviews
Hello!
K, I’m going to be kinda picky because this is very short and because that’s how I roll. Twit Flounder, soulless shredder, pleased to meet you.
The parenthetical “the pistol” throws off the flow of the sentence, and as this is the first sentence, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Also, saying “a pistol” rather than “the pistol” is kind of weird. You’d say “a pistol” if it was a surprise, if the pistol didn’t have any particular significance to it. But this is the gun that’s going to kill her, and she knows that. Saying “the pistol” instead of “a pistol” makes the sentence flow better, makes more sense and is very good for a first sentence because we’re going to subconsciously notice the definite article and wonder what the significance of this pistol is.
This doesn’t really flow very well and I’m not sure what you can do to fix it, apart from complete rewording. Try reading it out loud, and you should see what I mean. The bolded part (the important part) feels tagged onto the end because you’ve got the list and you’re painting the scene and then you’re suddenly harking back to the beginning of the sentence and it’s jarring. Maybe try something like, Everything around me had slowed down; the autumn leaves falling to the ground, the desperate voices of all those calling my name, the strong hand yanking me back by the hair. It flows better if you have the list at the end, I think.
“Contemplating” sounds too... I don’t know, lazy? Like, I might contemplate the possibility of having cheese on toast for lunch, not my death. It doesn’t sound serious enough.
Up until now, she’s been kind of dreamy and numb. She’s been thinking about the scene around her and it’s all been going slow, but now she’s bold and it feels off. I don’t know if that makes sense, or if my pickiness is going overboard, but you might want to think about that. I’m very much in favour of using “said” as a dialogue tag because it’s so common, people skip over it and focus instead on the dialogue, which is how it should be. We don’t often use words like “proclaimed”, so I’m going to be looking at and thinking about your use of “proclaimed” instead of something simpler like “said” and so I’m missing the full effect of the dialogue.
Now here, the tag and the dialogue mesh well together because “whispered” is a common tag so I don’t notice it as much.
---
Hai!
This was short, but overall it was well written with just a few choppy passages that could be smoothed out. Personally speaking, I’d like more of a feel of character. I mean, in my last moments, I presume I’d be thinking of my family and of my dog and of the book I haven’t finished reading yet and how I really wish I’d finished a novel. Your character didn’t have any of that, none of the little things that make up a life, and I missed that a bit.
PM or Wall me if you have any questions!
-twit
Hey there!
First, let me just say that I thought this story was really interesting. It's written quite wonderfully. It was kind of sad, but so very hopeful at the same time.
Now, one thing that I had an issue with was the fact that you had very little background information. Who is that guy that is holding the gun up to your main character? After reading this I felt like I had missed some information. Like, why is he doing this in the first place? Maybe there's something that I'm missing, but I think you need to add a bit more to it in that regard.
I LOVE this so much. I'm not really sure why but I just love the way you worded this. It's incredibly insightful.
Again, I don't really exactly know why, but the simplicity of this sentence just completes this whole story in my opinion. Both your beginning and ending were quite strong.
Wonderful job!
~Devan
This was nice and had a very powerful feel to it. There were only a few little things I thought you might want to edit (or not, your choice).
That last comment I made refers to showing and not telling. Honestly, I have a problem with that too but you can easily overcome it by instead of telling the story directly with straight-forward words, you should be able to show the reader what you want to tell, let the reader do the imagining and not you.
I have a question: Who said "Yes or no?" Was it a killer or the Lord? I was confused there.
That's all I have to say. Nice job and I hope to see more of your works around!