z

Young Writers Society


12+ Violence

Facing Heaven

by LunaticParty


The sky desaturated into a deep grey, filling the sky with its darkness. It began to rain slowly and then it began to pound hard against my frame, harder and harder with every passing second. I walked calmly without a care along the sidewalk that suddenly started to flood with rainwater. My socks were already drenched but I didn't care. I peered up from the hoodie I was wearing. The heavy clouds rumbled and roared above me and the rain slapped the concrete, as if applauding me for past deeds. I smiled at that. I truly needed it. It encouraged me. Not only for past deeds but for the deed I was bound to make happen. Then I started to run. The rain hit faster and harder against me. My hood flew off my head and the rain began to soak my hair, adding to its sheer darkness. I cackled loudly. I was alone; I didn't care what I did. Several houses and trees whisked past me. The rain continued to fall. Then my foot caught on a loose stone. I felt the world tip and my head collide with hard, wet concrete. The impact made my eyesight blurry but I couldn't let that stop me from doing what I had to do. I picked myself up, feeling a stinging gash on the side of my head. I felt blood ooze from the wound. I was suddenly aware of my fast-paced breathing. I was most likely far from home at this rate. I slowed down and sighed heavily. My parents would end up realizing I was gone and send a search party to come look for me. Or they might not do that, not minding whether I left home or something of the sort. I didn't mind if they didn't care. It was enough that they brought me into to this world. I was sick of how the world worked, how everything was planned and sorted out here. It didn't matter to me now though. I began to run again. My head throbbed. I saw the gloomy scenery rush past me again. I knew I was almost at my destination. Any color left in the world began to lose its color, its warmth. I felt colder and colder. Colder than I already was. I clenched my hands and clenched my teeth together and I slowed my pace. An old shed faced me. Its dark brown wood was moist with rain water and it was in terrible shape. I didn't mind. I open the shed, thumping my body weight against its jagged door and entered. I took a waft from inside. A sharp mixed scent filled my nostrils. Wet wood, soil, and... the smell of rotten flesh. I smiled. I knew the smell all too well. I took a few more steps to the back of the shed and found a light switch. Turning it on, a fluorescent light flickered from a light bulb hanging from wires. I was surprised the shed still had electricity. Then I looked down. Distorted bodies were strewn across the floorboards. Several were unidentifiable or covered in dirt but I recognized many. Mother and Father's bodies were sitting up in the corner. Although they were just unconscious, their bodies appeared dead and their faces were pale and sunken with dread. I recognized my family's doctor, Dr. Kendall. He laid next to his wife and two children. They were all dead. I smiled at the sight, almost sighing emotionally. I walked back to a table were medical instruments and tools were all neatly lined up. I picked up a giant knife. It's blade was sharp and clean.

"Perfect," I muttered, turned around and glared at my parents' faces and chuckled.

"I can't believe I was worried about them coming to find me when they were here all along!" I laughed to myself, throwing my head back. I walked leisurely towards their corpses. I pulled my Mother by the legs and dragged her to my operating table. The surface was heavily stained with crimson liquid blood. That didn't matter. I felt Mother's weight on my shoulders as I lifted her up of the table. I heaved her upwards and propped her to a laying down position, facing the ceiling. Facing up to Heaven; her next destination. I clutched the knife tighter in my grip and brought it closer to my face. I saw my reflection in the blade. At a closer inspection, the knife bore millions of tiny, long scratches. My Mother deserved better. I went up to my instrument table and picked up a brand new blade. Inching closer to my Mother, I saw her eyes open and stare at me. In shock, her eyes widen, appearing to slightly bulge out of her limp, pale eyesockets. Pallid hands covered her mouth as she observed her surroundings. I knew she wanted to scream but she couldn't. She couldn't quite bear the fact that her son was doing these kind of things. I quickly rushed to her side and pushed her down. Mother put up quite a fight indeed, wailing her arms up and kicking yet no sound emitted from her vocal cords. Only throaty mumbles. From the bottom of my operating table, I revealed long leather straps. I buckled them tight around and across Mother's body. She halted her fighting. Tears streamed down her face and I almost hesitating in putting her out of her misery right then and there. I stared into her blue eyes, which I inherited. A pale, soft pastel blue. I showed her the new knife. She squinted and more tears leaked down her eyes. I couldn't bare to look at her sad face anymore. The knife drew closer to Mother's face. The tip of the blade sunk into her eyesockets. Deeper and deeper I pushed. Mother wasn't screaming. She was only crying. Blood slowly poured from her eye. The blade made a very soft clunk as it reached bone. With two hands, I pushed the knife backward to push out the eyeball. Sploshing sounds filled my ears, other than the roaring rain outside. I applied more pressure and saw the eyeball steadily lift itself from the socket. POP. I smiled. The blood-stained eyeball hung loosely from a lone nerve. I looked at Mother with a sly grin on my face. She had passed out and her breathing appeared ragged and harsh. I stuck the knife slowly in her other socket and pushed the eyeball out, rich, thick blood spewing from both empty holes. I cut the optic nerves out and laid the knife obscured in blood over Mother's chest.

"Mother," I whispered in her ear, "I have done justice. If you were to catch me, you would've told the police to lock me up." I pointed at several police guards from the local police station stacked up on one another. Dead. "I don't want that because I believe the world needs cleansing. I know that if I work hard enough, I can enforce new rules on a new world. A new world were no one will lock up people who believe they can change the world." I walk towards the door, happy for once in my life.

"I'll be out for a few minutes to impose my dream on this town," I chuckled, staring at my Father who was now eyeing me intensely with fear. I knew he wouldn't leave. He couldn't. I opened the door leading outside to the grey, wet, and messed up world. The rain was still pouring down harshly on the ground, thumping against the shed. I sighed and snickered under my breath.

"What I'm doing is merely a good deed. Even the rain encourages me."


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Points: 240
Reviews: 20

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Tue Mar 18, 2014 6:39 pm
YourLowness wrote a review...



So I got to this work and my eyes started bleeding!
There are so many huge paragraphs here and it is way too big to read.
Start breaking down those massive chunks into something more manageable, because I mean, look at this:

""I can't believe I was worried about them coming to find me when they were here all along!" I laughed to myself, throwing my head back. I walked leisurely towards their corpses. I pulled my Mother by the legs and dragged her to my operating table. The surface was heavily stained with crimson liquid blood. That didn't matter. I felt Mother's weight on my shoulders as I lifted her up of the table. I heaved her upwards and propped her to a laying down position, facing the ceiling. Facing up to Heaven; her next destination. I clutched the knife tighter in my grip and brought it closer to my face. I saw my reflection in the blade. At a closer inspection, the knife bore millions of tiny, long scratches. My Mother deserved better. I went up to my instrument table and picked up a brand new blade. Inching closer to my Mother, I saw her eyes open and stare at me. In shock, her eyes widen, appearing to slightly bulge out of her limp, pale eyesockets. Pallid hands covered her mouth as she observed her surroundings. I knew she wanted to scream but she couldn't. She couldn't quite bear the fact that her son was doing these kind of things. I quickly rushed to her side and pushed her down. Mother put up quite a fight indeed, wailing her arms up and kicking yet no sound emitted from her vocal cords. Only throaty mumbles. From the bottom of my operating table, I revealed long leather straps. I buckled them tight around and across Mother's body. She halted her fighting. Tears streamed down her face and I almost hesitating in putting her out of her misery right then and there. I stared into her blue eyes, which I inherited. A pale, soft pastel blue. I showed her the new knife. She squinted and more tears leaked down her eyes. I couldn't bare to look at her sad face anymore. The knife drew closer to Mother's face. The tip of the blade sunk into her eyesockets. Deeper and deeper I pushed. Mother wasn't screaming. She was only crying. Blood slowly poured from her eye. The blade made a very soft clunk as it reached bone. With two hands, I pushed the knife backward to push out the eyeball. Sploshing sounds filled my ears, other than the roaring rain outside. I applied more pressure and saw the eyeball steadily lift itself from the socket. POP. I smiled. The blood-stained eyeball hung loosely from a lone nerve. I looked at Mother with a sly grin on my face. She had passed out and her breathing appeared ragged and harsh. I stuck the knife slowly in her other socket and pushed the eyeball out, rich, thick blood spewing from both empty holes. I cut the optic nerves out and laid the knife obscured in blood over Mother's chest."

Hopefully, that puts my point across.
And eye sockets is two words.

I like what you've written.
Great content.
But aesthetically, this needs editing. :)




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16 Reviews


Points: 2149
Reviews: 16

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Sun Mar 16, 2014 6:06 pm
lace182 says...



This is gory and horrifying. Well done. I'm curious as to what caused this obviously young person to become so disenchanted with his world and angry at his parents as well as become so disturbed without being censured earlier. It seems the character is over the top and would have been caught before the police and his parents piled up in the shed. Nevertheless, it fits the genre. Some of the character's thoughts don't quite fit, however.

I suggest you read through your work and consider why your character 'doesn't mind' so many things, such at the shed, the rain, the injury, the darkness, but takes so much exception with the world. There are many things that do not annoy him. Doesn't it seem he would be a laid back individual given this state of mind? For such a person to become a killer seems odd without damn good reason. A young person (which I assume this character is due to the presence of parents) isn't likely to achieve such inner calm while so bent on hostility unless they were a psychopath, which this character isn't. That would require a larger lack of caring. I doubt a psychopath would care about the scratches in a knife with regards to his mother.

Concerning the structure of your writing, if you shorten the length of your paragraphs you can make the story easier to follow and more interesting. Not only does a reader's eyes get lost in large blocks of text, especially on a monitor, but groups of ideas get lost too.

Put one group of thoughts or actions in a paragraph. For example, you start the second large paragraph with the character's concern for him being followed. You end the paragraph by cutting optic nerves. No doubt there are a few ideas between and you could delineate them in their own paragraphs.

I like the horror aspect and the character's state of mind. He feels he needs to fix the world and murder is the means. Not only murder but mutilation. All is well as long as this can continue. Ack! The craziness come across clearly.

I believe the horror of this can be stronger if you use less description. For example - 'A pale, soft pastel blue.' Pastel blue is a pale, soft color. All you need to say is 'pastel blue'. If you want to paint a clearer picture, describe some other aspect of the eye.

Another, perhaps better example is all the reference to the rain, how it hits, how hard it falls, what it wets. That might be poetic symbolism but it slows down the story and feels dragged out. That sort of writing can get boring and it certainly doesn't lend itself well to horror. That genres should not be boring! For suspense you should not bore the reader but slowly advance the fear.

Watch for wordiness.
'I was suddenly aware of my fast-paced breathing.' can simply be, 'I breathed faster'.

Of course, you may decide you use wordiness or passive voice for a reason but be aware of it.

Overall, you can write. Keep up the work. I hope my review helped. If you want to write in this genre, I recommend you read in it. Not only will it give you an idea of what sells but it will show you how to pace your story and give you ideas for word usage. Keep a journal of your ideas so you aren't influenced too much by that which you read. That helps me. Thanks for the submission.




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25 Reviews


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Sat Mar 15, 2014 10:06 pm
Gringoamericano wrote a review...



Before I begin this review, I just have one thing to say: SHORTEN YOUR PARAGRAPHS! It's not enjoyable to read a giant wall of text followed by a short sentence followed by another giant wall of text. Granted, it could be deliberate, cause most crazy people on the internet don't know how to use the enter button; but when applied to a work of fiction, it just doesn't look good or read well.

Secondly, a few of your adverbs are redundant. For example

---EXCERPTS GO HERE---
"The sky desaturated into a deep gray, filling the sky with darkness..." That sounds a bit awkward when read aloud.

"It began to rain slowly and then it began to pound hard against my frame, harder and harder with every passing second" Same problem here. I think a better way to say this would've been something along the lines of "The rain pounded against my frame, each drop getting heavier by the second". That may not the best way to say it, but it's a bit less redundant

---EXCERPTS STOP HERE---

One thing I do certainly like about your story though is that it wastes no time trying to paint a vivid picture of what's going on. Every single gory detail was good enough to make me cringe. The general execution could use a bit of improvement, as stated above, but for the most part, the story serves its purpose.

What puts it above most of the other short stories on this site, though, is that it actually describes a moment. It isn't just "Hey guys, here's my concept, and what it's about, and the end". I consider that to be a huge disregard for the classic "show, don't tell" rule. Thankfully your story does not suffer from that.

So, to recap: Work on your paragraph breaks, and any redundancies. Everything else seems fine.





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