Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for mature content.
Chapter Three
Liana let out a deep sigh of relief as she blew out a puff of smoke.
“I fucking needed this” She said, glancing over at Carla who was already on her second one.
“Especially after having to kick blue suit guy out. Pompous little shit” Carla responded with a slight laugh. “Are you sure you didn’t fracture any ribs?”
Liana shrugged slightly “So what if I did? He deserved it. Trying to grab the other waitresses, probably planning to drug his date and not leave a tip. That irritates the hell out of me.”
“I feel that” Carla tossed her cigarette in the ash tray and took a long drink from her water bottle.
“Two more hours and then we get a break. See you inside” She said and disappeared back into the bar.
Liana sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. She stared at the smoking cigarette and couldn’t help feeling a small pang of guilt. It wasn’t often, she definitely wasn’t addicted and really didn’t want to get addicted. Every time she had one though, Liana couldn’t help but imagine her dad being disappointed. Given her current state, Liana had absolutely no idea if these things could hurt her or not. Her shoulders ached and twinged, drawing her out of her thoughts.
“Alright, screw it” Liana muttered to herself, very carefully looked around to make sure there was no other person about and ducked a little farther into a dark corner. She stretched her shoulders, flexing as if to split them apart and a pair of large, feathered, black and white wings appeared with a little flap.
“There it is” Liana said, stretching everything out and relieving her aching muscles.
“Been a long night?” A voice came out of the shadows, making Liana jump. A man landed softly in front of her, dark gray and light black wings folded behind him. He was only a few inches taller than Liana, a very square jaw, angular brown eyes and short black hair. A crooked smirk decorated his face as he observed Liana.
“Damn it Jerome, what the hell are you doing here?” Liana responded crossly, pulling her wings back in and crossing her arms.
“Oh, just stopping by. I’m bored. Watching you throw out an unruly customer is the most entertainment I’ve had all night. You gave him a fair beating, let alone throwing him into the curb. What on earth was he wearing? I think I went mildly blind looking at the shiny polyester.” Jerome responded, his smirk getting bigger as he watched Liana’s fingers tap with impatience and irritation. Liana took another drag on her cigarette and glared at him.
“Cut the bullshit Jerome. Not the night to piss me off. Boredom is not the only reason you’re here. What does Damien want now? Also, I’m working. I still have to make a normal human living.”
Jerome shrugged “Not sure actually. He just told me that he wants to see you later. Something about a job.”
An oddly toothy grin flashed across Liana’s face when he said that. She flicked the cigarette at Jerome and walked back inside without responding.
A couple hours later and the open sign went dark, lights turned off, doors were locked and tips were counted out.
“Good haul tonight Carla?” Liana asked, glancing over at her friend as she wiped the counter down.
“$200. I’ve had better but it’s definitely not the worst. That last table were jerks though. I wasn’t the nicest so that didn’t work in my favor. Worth it though” Carla responded, unpinning her hair and taking out her long braids.
“That’s fair. I only made $50 more. Split it?” Liana responded, sliding a hard lemonade over to her and opening her own.
“Sure. I’m ready to go home and sleep for about a decade. We’ve got tomorrow off and if someone calls in, fuck that. I need my time off.” Carla said bitterly and took a long drink.
“Hear that. I’ve got errands to run before I can do that, though it’s not like I’ll get some good sleep anyways.” Liana replied, sighing inwardly. No one, absolutely no one knew about her...condition. About her second form. She wanted to tell someone, wanted someone she could trust that much, wanted someone who could help her through it so badly that it ached. Carla was her best friend but Liana really had no idea how she would react if she ever found out. Found out that there was an entire hidden world of “angels” and “demons” and one could only be part of that world by dying, or almost dying and choosing to stay on earth. The wings were dictated by what that person had done when they were fully human, how corrupted they were or not. Most of the beings wings were a mix of white and gray, a lot of them were completely black and very, very few were pure white. Some where definitely whiter than others. Liana had gotten hers the night she drowned. That rainy night, two years ago when she had jumped in the river to end it all. That night she had been offered a second chance, but at a price. A bounty hunter, hunting people who committed the crimes like the ones that killed her. Suicide was always a straight shot to hell, Liana regretted doing it. So she took the offer and kept hoping there could be a way to redeem herself, to get a true second chance. But every person she killed turned a black feather white, sent another guilty knife into her heart and soul. As much as Liana hated the boy who had r***** her and wanted him dead, she didn’t believe that it was her job to play judge and jury. While killing others who committed those crimes, both women and men, made the world a better place, was it really her job to decide who lives and dies? She’d made a deal though and so far there wasn’t a way out of it.
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Heyo, here for another review! Read up to this point! :^) I'm all caught up!
Grammar and Format:
Missing comma.
Missing comma.
Something I've noticed is that you often are missing commas at the end of dialogue before dialogue tags! It's been a recurring thing, so it might be good to comb through and check for it in your posts and make a note to add it in the future!
I'd break this up. Not only does it look chunky, but because it's followed by such a big paragraph, I might see about breaking that paragraph up too, even if it's just once. It just helps with readability and flow, to me.
Story:
So far, I've loved the dynamic between Carla and Liana. I think you depict their friendship well, and I can tell that they're good friends before Liana ever says they're best friends in her internal monologue. I like that there's an ease in their dialogue and relationship; it comes across very clearly.
I appreciate the mystery of Jerome's appearance and the hints at Damian - who I'm guessing might be the person who offered her the second chance? If I'm correct in this, that might be worth saying explicitly, in the last paragraph. If I'm wrong, no worries.
As for her current predicament, I can see why, after her down-spiral brought on by her former abusive relationships and trauma, that she took the offer for a second chance. You already established her rage and distress as a clear motivator to say yes to something like this -- taking vengeance on behalf of others, since she never did it for herself.
I see the conflict in her heart exposes her hypocrisy, but also the difficult nuance of the human condition. She doesn't want to "play judge and jury" for herself, but she said yes to doing it for others, if it meant a second chance at life. The regret that's implied is potent, not just because of her conflict of interests, but because ultimately it stems to her regret of taking her life.
I will say that until the second chapter (previous), it didn't hit me that she'd died. The end of chapter one was ambiguous from my perspective, but when it was explained in chapter two and expounded on in chapter three, I had the ah-hah moment. If you [I]wanted/i] it to feel like the story was over in chapter one and have a sense of intense "how is that the end, the story just started?" -- Then maybe have more clarity of the finality at the end of chapter one. But if you want it to be ambiguous for the intrigue, it works as is.
On another note: Liana's/the narrative voice is really strong and consistent, here! I liked it.
Overall, there's a lot of mystery going on. I like that the progression of the narrative raises a lot of questions. It keeps me wanting to read for answers!
That's all from me for now, but if you post future chapters continuing this story, feel free to tag me to keep going. I'm enjoying the pacing.
Great work, and keep writing!
- sound
Hello lovely person! I’m here to give you some feedback for this great chapter of yours! I apologize, as I haven’t read the other chapters quite yet, but I will say that this was a good way to jump in for me--I wasn’t too confused.
Firstly, I just noticed a few punctuation/grammar errors, but these can be easily fixed! Make sure that all your dialogue tags and actions (she said, she shrugged) end in a period when they are put before a quote. And when you’re doing dialogue, make sure that the end of your quote has punctuation--if it’s not a question or exclamation mark, you want to use a comma. Here’s a quick example from your chapter--
As opposed to:
Just some nitpicks there! For the most part, I love your tone throughout--your dialogue also seems pretty accurate to the characters and natural.
I would recommend you separate the last paragraph into sections: As it is right now, it is very fatiguing to the reader to have such a big chunk of text. A good rule of thumb when you’re dealing with a monster paragraph like that is to create a new paragraph for when you are describing a different part of her “condition” (in this instance).
Overall, I enjoyed reading this!! Good luck with the rest of your book and have a great day <3
<3, chem