Death By Chess June 24, 2091 Part Five

Hey Kaywiia.

O.o It's been since the 15th and no critique? Ack! I'll see what I can do, since I've been following this...

A few of the other gang members pat me on the back, most of them just snickering and mocking me, trying to figure out how long I'll last.

How long until I die. >>I guess this was put here for dramatic reasons, but it's a little bit overdramatic, actually. I think, mostly, because you said "how long I'll last" in the paragraph before, and that means pretty much the same thing. You might consider just changing "how long I'll last" to "how long until I die" and see how that works.

Mark comes and sits beside me. "Don't worry. I think you'll be alright." He says.>>The "He says" sort of makes it read choppy. You can take it out; since he's doing the action, it implies that the dialogue is also his. Or, if you really want to leave it, there should be a comma after "I think you'll be all right [[two words]]," and "He" should be "he" [[not capitalized.]]

"I don't know anyone!" I complain.

AAAH! From here, you start to use past tense, instead of present. You've been using present for this entire novel, and now you suddenly slip into past. Not good. Definitely go through and fix it; decide what tense you want and stick with it.
"Most of 'em will be dead by next Tuesday, but anyway...That one over there," he pointed to a large, buff man who had tattoos running down his arm, "Is Jerro. He runs this joint, until someone gets pissed off, and bullets go flying. Haha! Nice. Anyway, he's Antonio, you, er, met him earlier." Who's Antonio? It sounds like he just called Jerro Antonio. Try something like, "This other guy here--he's Antonio. You, er, met him earlier."

"What about them?" I ask pointing to the two identical men, standing side by side against a pillar, talking to another boy.

"Those are Frank and Derris. Twins, but Derris is two minutes older. Franks as dumb as a post, but you didn't hear that from me. >>*lol* awesome!The boy they are talking to is Jack. Jack's brilliant, when you get to know him. Great fighter, great friend." Mark had a real sense of pride in his voice when he said this, one that told me he really looked up to him.

"How old is he?"

"He is 18. Just a man, as of yesterday, not that we track birthdays around here," Mark grinned, then pointed to another man. "Anyway, that's Reg. He keeps to himself a lot. Good fighter though, and real useful around these parts. He's saved my neck a few times. Those last two, over there, are Randy and Arnold. They're new, only came just last week. Friends of Antonio, I think. Randy's okay, nothing special,though. He's just kind of a pawn to us."

"A pawn?"

"You'll get the explanation when Jerro thinks you need it. It ain't my place to tell you. But Arnold, in my opinion, is stupider than 100 >>Spell out "one hundred" when writing. Franks, and he knows it too. I don't think he'll last too long." Nice.

It shocked me, really, how calmly they discussed death. To me, it was a constant fear, and now it was being paraded in front of me, like it was nothing of any importance. I wondered back at what Mark had said about the pawn, curious to know if I was something, too.

The man called Jack walked up to me. "So you're Riley then. I have a friend named Riley--had a friend, anyway. Good luck; the girls don't last that long around here. Maybe except Jerro's girl. But she got herself shot last week. He's been right beat up over it. Oh, well. really, I hope you last." Jack looked at me for a second, and I expected that there was more than one meaning in his words.

All right.

What you have here is good. But, it was a little bit anticlimactic. It's just basically knowing who the people are. She doesn't get to actually meet anyone other than Jack, doesn't get to talk to them. Not really anything else going on. True, that is a big part of a story--knowing the characters--but I would have liked a little more action. It was just weird, because I'm used to the, "Okay let's go do stuff!" side of Riley.

Anyway, that's about all I have for now, so hope it helps.

Later!