Chapter Four
Arie
“Help!” I bit my lip, doing everything I could not to scream. The blood was swelling around my ankle now, the sharp metal teeth of the hunter‘s trap clamping tight. Owww….
Where was Jordan? I wasn’t too far from the Hideout, she should’ve heard me. I lifted the heavy metal thing from the ground, but it was pointless; there was a chain latching it deep into the ground. Whatever sort of trap I’d stepped into wasn’t an easy one to escape from.
For whatever reason, there was a small red light on it, too, and it was flashing. Maybe there was some high-tech system that alerted the trapper when something got caught. Yeah; maybe I wouldn’t be there long after all. In the meantime, the pain was killing me. Shifting the easiest possible way, I reached into my pocket for my phone. It wasn’t there.
“FISH!” I growled; my replacement cussword was the center of plenty of taunting, but I didn’t care. I would shout “trout” and “guppy” and “marlin” if it got me out of this. “Oh, fish, fish, fish, fish!”
A bush rustled. “Jordan?”
No. Out stepped a boy, maybe my age, maybe older. Weird enough, I’d never met him, but pain overcame my typical shyness. “Help me, please,” I cried in a shaky and desperate voice that barely felt like mine, tears wiped away with my dirty hand.
“Okay, Arie, don’t move or this’ll hurt,” he whispered.
“H-how do you know my name’s--?”
He held his fingers to his lips. The brush rustled once again, the trap's red light flashing faster. For whatever reason, my heart instinctively sped.
It wasn’t Jordan. My chest heaved a tight breath.
I couldn’t see the figures well in light that blocked them from my sight, but I heard one’s words. “Take her.”
Like the end of a movie, everything pooled to black. No credits ran, but images spiraled through my subconscious mine.
I heard it again and again: Take her.
And I was their's to take.
End of chapter
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140,592 Literary Works • 673,545 Reviews
Hey there!
Okay, so first off, this is kinda short, at least compared to your other chapters, which are pretty long. I think you could easily fill this in with more thoughts and descriptions like you did the other chapters. It seems a little... incomplete. For whatever reason.
When I first read this, I thought it was who was by the bush talking. After a few confused read-throughs, I realized it was Arie speaking. But generally when you have an action and undialogue-tagged dialogue by it, we assume whoever did the action is the person speaking. Since it's not, I'd suggest either adding a dialogue tag, or putting them in separate paragraphs. But I think a dialogue tag, and maybe some thought attached, would be a lot better.
Okay, so for the most part, this is pretty good. But, it's also a little raw. The other ones are filled with thoughts and descriptions - wonderful things when done right. This one isn't, not as much. I think you should stop and look into it more. Like, when the boy comes. What exactly is she thinking? What's her immediate perceptions of him, other than he's her age? Does she wonder why he's there, what he's doing, who he's talking to? And, in general, you should do more of that, add in comparing things, that sort of thing, because that's what you did before. You made the characters work things out in their heads. You took in information and gave it to us as she received it. So far, that's your biggest strength in these. You make them realistic. I'd like to see a little more of that in this.
Other than that, this is good. The ending line is hooking, and such. So good work.
loveness, ultraviolet <3
Poor Arie. This raises many interesting questions like, "Who is this strange person?" "Did he leave the note at the hideout?" and other things that you hopefully won't answer for a good long while. I like Arie's euphamism, it kinda creates an interesting picture of her. For some reason I think she's a curly-haired redhead who wears something light green, though I don't recall if you've described her or not and you don't need to use my description. Quick point, "mine" should be "mind" in the third-to-last paragraph (the one before the last two sentences). The rest of that paragraph is very nice and descriptive, your figurative language is well-placed and so far hasn't been too pervasive (I always hate it when every other paragraph is a simile or metaphor, but you even it out nicely).
It sounds like Arie doesn't have much of a fighting spirit there in the last sentence. The whole chapter is equally mysterious and informative. Hope we see more of Arie; she sounds cool.