Published May 1, 2010
Rain fell against my bedroom window, hiding me from the outside; drop chasing drip in a constantly changing, soundless pattern across the window pane.
On top of the window sill lays many pictures, looking straight at me. Groups of family and friends, watching me. Stiff-necked, folded arms, no longer cheerful and happy; their eyes focused on me. Gone were the carefree expressions, the laughter, the joy; only sadness, it was the only emotion that existed now.
‘What are we gunna do?’ A sobbing voice echoed in my head.
‘Will we be killed next?’ Just a child’s voices this time asked.
“I don’t know….” I murmured. “I don’t know.” I said growing hysterical. “I don't know!” Tears started to roll down my already tear stained cheeks.
“Everyone is dead,” A lump formed in my throat. “Nana, papa,” I choked on a sob. “Aunt Clara, Uncle Dave, Uncle Z., Emma, Jacob,” My body shook with sobs. “Even baby Gus!” I covered my face with my hands and just let it all out. “Even Mama. Why?”
I probably could’ve cried forever, but over my slightly hysterical crying, I heard a slight creek come from my door. A little startled, I looked towards the door, rubbing my green eyes a bit, I saw my little brother with his own tear stained face. His blonde hair distorted, most likely from sleep, cutely and his azure eyes red rimmed.
“Come here Oliver and give your big sis a hug. Kay?” My voice was huskey from the non stop crying I'd been doing a lot lately. I held out my arms. He ran to me and tackled me into a hug.
He and I had both seen Mama die. We, also, had both seen the family around us drop one by one. At first it was just Uncle Z, then Auntie Clara and Uncle Dave, then it was Nana and Papa. Until it was only the kids left. Then they started to drop dead too. All had been murdered. The only thing left were broken bloody bodies, or just memories; their bodies just gone.
It was sickening. ‘Predator’ was what he called himself. He had been playing a game with my whole family and the only ones left are Oliver and I. We were also the next ones to die.
I hugged Oliver closer; I don’t want to lose him.
We stayed like that until the phone rang, we both jumped, startled.
“I’ll be right back, Okay?” I pulled Oliver away so I could see his face. His sky blue eyes still shimmering with tears.
“Mm 'kay.” His bottom lip stuck out in a pout.
I followed the wooden floored hallway to the livingroom.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is there a person by the name of Odette Vera here?” An authoritative male voice questioned.
“Uh, Yeah that’s me.” I ran a shaky hand through my disheveled strawberry blonde hair.
“Hello, Mrs. Vera I am Officer Feeny with the police department. We are sending someone over to pick you and your brother up. They should be there about….” The man’s voice paused for a second , confirming the time probably, before talking again. “20-30 minutes.”
I sighed. “Okay.” Here come the stupid police out to do more useless things.
“Thank you for your time and goodbye.”
Before I could say any kind of goodbye myself, I heard a click; signaling the officer hung up.
I sighed again; time to pack up.
I scanned around the living room; from the ratty old couch to the brown curtains covering the huge window facing the street. Sadly, I wanted to stay. I then frowned slightly, It would do no good to remain here.
After some-a lot- of persuasion, I got little Olly to pack. I had helped him of course, and now he was ‘helping’ me with mine.
“No,” I laughed hollowly. “Honey, that is not how you fold a shirt.” I went over to assist him.
He tried to pull away saying he could do it when the door bell rang.
“That must be them.” I started to walk towards the door when Oliver shot past me.
“I got sis! You finish packing your own stuff.” His little bare feet pitter pattered away on the hard wood flooring.
I smiled sadly to myself. That boy.
I walked back to my bed and my suitcase then started to refold the shirt we both fussed over earlier.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Violent, abrupt explosions rang through my ears.
Everything slowed down to a crawl. "No!!!!" Verdant eyes widened and pupils dilated.
I felt out of my body, so numb and cold. Adrenaline raced through my frozen veins as I ran, horrified, to the living room. I smelt it first, the metalic tang; then I saw it, the crimson liquid. Blood.
Silent tears fell down my face.
'It can't be... this can't be happening.'
Visions of Mama's violated, broken, and oh so bloodybody flashed in my vision.
I stumbled, not wanting to believe what was right in front of me. After a moment I began to walk with short, unsteady steps toward the dead, bloody body of my little brother. My little Ollie.
“No.” I choked out, falling down to my knees beside him. Thick, sticky blood soaked into my jeans. “No.” A chocked sound came out of my throat; I had sent my brother to his death.
My vision clouded as I examined him. Three bullet wounds in all; one in the head, the heart, and one in stomach. That's when I saw a piece of paper, stark white against the crimson.
You are the remaining child of the Vera family.
How does it feel? Not too good I hope. Well just think on the
bright side, you're next. Maybe that isn’t so bright. But yes you
are obviously next on my list, and I am going to take my time on
this one. Draw out on your sorrow.
Tudelu,
Predator
I screamed partially horrified, but mostly angry, then crumpled up the paper and threw it.
I collapsed on my brother’s dead body, not caring if I got soaked with blood. My salt water tears mixed in with the blood.
I stayed that way until I heard cars start to turn into the gravel driving in front of the house. My pathetic sobs turned to laughter. My frown turned into a sadistic smile. The tears continued to stroll freely down my face.
“Careful though.” I managed through my insane laughter. “Soon the prey will become the predator.”
‘I promise you little brother, you will be avenged.’ More uncontrollable laughter bubbled out of my system.
The pain ebbed away; it didn’t hurt so much when I laughed.
I felt someone’s hand on my shoulder and I turned my crazed face towards them. I’m sure that the only thing I saw on that person’s face was not pity, but fear. And I loved it.
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139,616 Literary Works • 672,626 Reviews
Hey there!
Wow, I really liked this! You’re ending was especially nice; not many people can make the transformation into insanity as convincing as you did. I didn’t feel like it was cheesy at all, and I think that it was the hardest part to write in this chapter; you tackled it beautifully! Great job! I liked how this character can become a potential villain, also.
The other reviews seem to cover all the grammar mistakes I noticed; be sure to do a serious proofread.
One thing that bothered me a little about this was that you used repetition with a lot of words.
I probably could’ve cried forever, but over my slightly hysterical crying, I heard a slight creek come from my door. A little startled, I looked towards the door, rubbing my green eyes a bit, I saw my little brother with his own tear stained face. His blonde hair distorted, most likely from sleep, cutely and his azure eyes red rimmed.
“Come here Oliver and give your big sis a hug. Kay?” My voice was huskey from the non stop crying I'd been doing a lot lately. I held out my arms. He ran to me and tackled me into a hug.
Weep, sob, snivel, whimper, bawl, blubber. Try to use as big of a vocabulary in your writing as possible. I got all of those from the little thesaurus attached to Microsoft Word. If you find yourself repeating words or phrases, thesauruses can be a big help.
I thought you did a pretty good job avoiding overusing the word ‘blood’ though. I know how hard that can be sometimes; I’m working on writing a vampire book
All in all, this is an amazing first post! I hope I see you around YWS.
~black sheep~
Hey there!
So I agree a lot with what Canislupis said. You have a great base for a plot/story here, but you're missing a few important pieces, mainly characterization. Try to develop your characters more within this first chapter. (I'm assuming it's a chapter?) So much happens just in this short space - we meet your characters, we learn their situation, and the situation already rushes to a change. But I have no firm grasp on who your main character is, and for that matter, why. Obviously her family is being hunted, and by the end she wants to take revenge - but the psychological change that's gone on in her is a strong one and I don't feel like you developed it enough. Perhaps you should do some research into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I'm sure in such a case as this, your main character and the little boy would have that. Also, if all of her family has died thus far, why haven't they left earlier? It's just an odd situation. But that can be remedied. The characterization really needs to be worked on though.
Like Canilupis said some of your character reactions are a bit stilted. Try to go back over it and make it natural and powerful. You don't want to just tell us that the main character's family have died - you want us to relate to this feeling and feel hurt for her. Knock us down with emotions! It's hard to do but important. Maybe you should check out Snoink's Character Development usergroup for some help, it's helped me out a lot before.
Also a minor point: You flip-flop between present and past tense, you might want to look over it and decide which tense you want to write in.
Best of luck! Hope you enjoy the site, since I see you're a new-comer.
Wow...that was, what's the word.....hmmmmmmmmm........
Well I'm going to come up with a word for this story.
Creepsanesity - definition: Creepy, insanity,and pure madness. That is basically what your story is..BUT IN A GOOD WAY!
After all, it was a well plotted horror story. You can't say a horror story was good natured, happy and refreshing!
As the other reviewers pointed out, you had A LOT of grammar and spelling mistakes, so make sure the next you write another story you go over it a lot before posting.
I like the characterization of Odette, but we really don't learn much about Oliver and Predator. I would love to see you shape the Predator into a creepier guy that we can get goose bumps about from the reading.
All in all, a good story.
Oh and Congrats on being featured!!
-Jane
Wow, you've tackled a difficult idea here. :O I like what you did with it.
The beginning paragraph appealed to me, so kudos to you, because it's often the hardest part to write. I'll try not to repeat what the other reviewers have said before me.
Firstly, I'm the old-fashioned sort that prefers little capslocking in stories because it makes the dialogue seem less serious. I think the same effect would be gained with italics.
I'd prefer it be a simple line of dashes or just a few 'enter' keys, since it's a little less complicated and looks clean and crisp.
Yeah, like I mentioned above. I think simple [woops, repeating myself too much] words would hit harder.
I think I'm the only one, but I got the century-old royal family murder vibe from this piece, mostly from the way the 'Predator' said "the Vera family". I would have replaced it with "your family" or something to that effect.
And that's it. Your ending is a nice, satisfying twist to the story and calls for a potential epilogue or leaves an open end as a finale, which is definitely my kind of story. Makes me wonder who the person she turned to is.
Good job on this story. Keep up the good work.
Wow. That was...creepy...and amazing. I can't believe how she would have felt...I'm guessing that that last face was either the police officer or the predator?
Somebody needs to be put into a mental institute...of course, who wouldn't after something like that happened to them? *shudders*
Anyways....
It was an amazing story! I loved it!
*clicks like*
This is seriously disturbing.
Which is good!
Oh, and welcome to YWS! You're already featured! Wow, that's really impressive.
Now, on to the review. I noticed a couple things:
1. Proofreading!!!! There were plenty of errors and typoes. Let me find an example....
Ok, this is a good example. "We'll" should be "Well," and "your" should be "you're" plus there are lots of grammatical mistakes. Now that I think about it, that should have been intentional with the note, but it's the same with the rest of the story.
Eg. Mrs. which should be Ms. unless she's married, dialogue punctuation in a number of spots, etc. I think you can probably figure that out on your own, but if you need help I can send you links to articles on this site that I found helpful.
Watch out especially for run-on sentences. I saw quite a few of them. Here is one place where there were three in a row:
"I sighed again. Time to pack up" or "I sighed again; time to pack up."
"I scanned around the living room sadly. I wanted to stay. Then I frowned slightly. It would do no good to stay here." (Also: is scanned the right word? And, you repeated "stay." Avoid repetition whenever possible.)
Moving on...
2. Character reactions/descriptions.
This is a very emotional piece, and most of us can probably not even imagine what your MC is going through. Still, I felt that some of your descriptions fell flat. (Eg. "crying uncontrollably") and there were one or two times when she went from being unconsollable to downright cheery. On the other hand, though, I love the way she went crazy in the end.
3. Character development/description.
I know it's a bit early, but I'd have liked to get a better idea of this character. What does she look like? What does her little brother look like? What does the house look like?
4. Redundancies. You don't have a major problem, but there were one or two times....
hmm. I'll just give an example:
Gun shots... really? I think we can figure that out on our own. Often, in writing, less is more, if you know what I mean.
5. Cliches. Down with them! Avoid them at all costs.
Done before!
Overall:
There is a solid foundation here. I especially liked the way you mentioned the raindrops chasing eachother on the window pane. That was excellent foreshadowing. There is definitely a lot potential here.
But. You really need to do a solid proof-reading session. I suggest reading it aloud, or reading it to yourself backward, since that makes it harder to skim over typos, etc. If it feels awkward to say it, it's probably wrong.
I hope this helps, and once again, welcome to YWS!
If you have questions or want a review, PM me!
Lupis
Hello Obsess, nice to meet and welcome to the site hope your finding your way around the YWS alright and if you need any help or a review on something be fee to ask me or anyone else familiar to the site. Now enough of my rambling and on to your story, first a few nitpick that need to be claered up:
Woah, nice ending. This was good for your first post with the exception of a few mistakes that I pointed out. Thanks for the read, keep writing and now I bid you farewell.
Insanity! Yes!!
Do I like this story? Do I not? I dunno...hehehehe, I do, I don't, I do, IdoIdon't...hahahahahehehehe!! What? me, crazy?! Never!!
Hmm. Now that that's out of the way...excellent, EXCELLENT work! My only complaints are the occasional spelling error or grammer mistake, but otherwise VERY nicely done!! Definetly liked!
- G