Breathing in the Darkness
When I open my eyes I can see nothing, I am surrounded by nothing. It's dark and so, so cold. I don't understand how I got here, much less know where here is, and I am afraid. But then a light breaks through the nothingness, a single beam of beautiful light that chases away the darkness. I'm still afraid but the light is drawing me in, pulling me towards it and for a fleeting moment I can forget that I am afraid.
That moment is not nearly long enough because as though it senses my hope the light begins to flicker and I am afraid again. I don't want to go back into the darkness . But the light doesn't listen and I'm left in nothingness once again. Only this time it's not complete nothingness. In the darkness I can feel cold fingers brushing against my bare arms. I can hear shallow breathing surrounding me but my finger curl around air when I reach out to touch the source of the noise.
My heart rate increases with The Breathing. I can't see what is surrounding me but I can feel it moving, tensing, and finally I feel the pain as it strikes me. I cry out and my hand moves up to cover the now sticky wound on my arms. I can't see it but I know that if I took my hand away it would be red with blood. The Breathing Moves again but faster and I have no time to react before my other arm is bleeding too. I scream and The Breathing hitches in a strangled laugh. Something wet drips onto the floor but I can't see well enough to know if it's tears or blood. The Breathing strikes again, and again, and again. I'm begging it to stop , pleading for mercy but the attacks never do. I'm bleeding from every limb, blood is all that I taste, all that I feel, and I wonder why I haven't yet died. The Breathing shifts and a point rests at the base of my neck before being drawn back and I realize that I'm about to. The Breathing slashes my neck once, barely leaving a paper cut. It's playing with me. I sob with the realization that I will not be granted a quick death.
"Stop." I beg, crying. "Please stop." The Breathing slashes me again, only a faint trickle of blood escaping but the pain greater than the last cut.
"Stop, please." I beg again gasping for breath between sobs. The Breathing only laughs it's strangled laugh and for some reason this angers me. An unfamiliar sensation seemed to course through my veins replacing the fear with anger and hatred.
"Stop!" I yell again only more forcibly. "Stop this!" The Breathing didn't even hesitate on leaving more cuts on the back of my. This new anger that seemed to be growing inside me was only fuelled by it's defiance of my order. Slowly I felt something change as The Breathing began making deeper cuts. It was like a burning fire was devouring my heart, it hurt but for the first time since I'd opened my eyes I wasn't afraid. The burning grew and grew but the cuts began hurting less and less. The Breathing became angry, I could feel it cutting harder, not just on my neck but all along my torso. I could feel it pressing down harder, trying desperately to draw blood but I couldn't feel the pain of the cutting anymore.
The fire was spreading through my veins, singeing my fingertips and burning my palms. I was screaming now but not because of the cuts, they had all but stopped, I was screaming because of the fire. I could tell that this angered The Breathing and eventually it seemed to decide to be done with me. I heard it raise it's weapon, ready to bring it down on my head when the burning reached it's peak and I let out an animalistic cry. The scream was filled with so much pain The Breathing startled and hesitated it's strike. The fire burned in every vein and every artery in my body. I could feel it feeding on my remaining blood making sure that the fire was all I had left. My muscles contracted and my body tensed. Before I could understand what was happening I felt my body convulse and the burning ripped it's way out of my limbs. I screamed and cried and begged for someone, anyone to please make it stop. So much was the pain that I didn't even notice when The Breathing's screams blended with my own. I didn't recognize the twisted melody it created when the two different kinds of being burned alive combine their screaming.
Slowly the burning stopped and I fell to the now singed ground. The burning had left me with no tears to cry and double the pain to want to. Dryly I sobbed into the blackened stone beneath me not even noticing the absence of The Breathing until the single light flickered back on. Weakly I raised my head from the floor and stared up at it with accusing eyes The light flickered again and I sighed preparing my mind to go back into the darkness but the darkness didn't come. Three more lights clicked on instead. On illuminated a mangled pile of metal that I instantly knew to be The Breathing, another showed me the corner where I must have originally opened my eyes before the light drew me to what must be the center of the room. The third and final light came from beyond a glass window highlighting three people and a control panel.
The tallest person pointed to my corner, ignoring the blood and ash that surrounded me. A chocked moan slipped from my lips when I tried to stand, the pain burned my legs again, and I fell to the floor. I looked back to the tall man but his expression was hard and serious. He pointed again to the corner. Biting back a sob I crawled like a broken dog back to my corner. Every move hurt, even just resting on my hands and knees, but eventually I made it. Looking back up I saw the other people flipping switched behind the glass barrier and then the lights began to leave. First the light in the center of the room left obscuring my blood trail with nothingness. Then the light over The Breathing left leaving my tormentor undistinguishable in the darkness. Finally the light left from behind the glass window leaving my light behind extinguished and alone. Through the darkness a cold and uncaring voice rang out.
"Experiment 2287 complete." Then my light left and I remained, crying and bleeding in the cold stone floor.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hi there! Noelle here for a Review Day review!
Whew, what an intense story! I don't know why, but when I clicked on this story I thought it would be a nice, emotional story about someone who thinks they're left alone in the dark but they really aren't. Boy was I wrong. Instead, I got a rather haunting story about a person being attacked by this unknown being, which ends up to be a machine (at least I assume that it is). Definitely not the feel good story I was imagining.
Just a small nitpick here. There are some other places where you left out words, but I'm not going to go through and list them all. If you go back through and read this again slowly, you'll catch them all. I know that you're able to edit all by yourself
Um, I don't think you can hear a weapon being raised. You can, however, hear a sword being taken out of a sheath. You can also hear a bullet being loaded and a gun being locked, ready to be used. You should really describe the sounds the weapon is making instead of just saying the MC can hear the weapon.
Another small nitpick here. You used the wrong form of the word I underlined. Remember, it's=it is. So in this sentence, that doesn't make sense. You have to use 'its' instead, without the apostrophe. Its is possessive, which is what you're trying to describe here. There are several other places that I see you do this, so make sure to edit through this carefully. Again, I know that you can edit through this and find all the mistakes other reviewers would point out.
As for your characters, I feel like you did a good job with them. Although I'd really like to know if your MC is a girl or boy, it's not important. The only important thing is how they're feeling and what's being done to them.
Your descriptions of the pain is rather good. Although I feel like the torture, or whatever it is, goes on for quite a long time. Wouldn't your MC be dead long before the experiment was over? I feel like he/she wouldn't be able to survive those kind of wounds. *shrugs* But you know more about your story than I do so your MC probably can survive this all considering they do.
I really enjoyed this. It made me feel hurt, hopeful, and terrible all at once. You did a good job tugging at my emotions by really describing how your MC felt. And it's a very interesting sci-fi story that leaves me with so many questions. That's a good thing in this case. You've given me enough information to really wonder about what the heck was going on in this experiment. And it's kind of creepy to know that they (whoever they may be) have done 2,287 experiments. I do hope all those weren't on the same person.
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
I want to start off by saying I can see were you are going with this piece of work. However it needs work, and lots of it.
1.)Characters
In this piece of work, you really only introduce on character. From what I have read I can not even tell if it is a he/she. Your character is obviously scared and that's fine but your writing is really mostly telling us that he/she is scared. There are places were you use the concept of showing but instead of a few places were you use that you should use it all over. Your character also seems a little underdeveloped. Almost like you rushed through the creation of the character like you didn't care.
I saw that you were trying to create more then just one character, but that character/s also seemed a little underdeveloped. That character/s weren't really there, it just seemed like they were faded figures in the background. Work though that.
2.)Plot
It was there, just not as much as it should have been. I saw were you wanted to go but I think that you didn't see it that much yourself. Your story needs more development and I think that if you were to read through it a couple more times then it would be a whole lot better. Now I am not trying to sound mean or anything, sometimes people just need to be hit with reality.
3.) Detail
That was definitely there, I liked that about your writing. You have used very good intriguing words and your description of the darkness and the breath was well written. I think that your best detail was in the last paragraph, and that is a good thing because it left the reader with a sense of fulfillment.
Over all, your story lacked development of characters and plot but had wonderful detail. With a few more reviews from both others ad your self I believe that you will find the right meaning of this work. You have a great eye for description but you just don't know it yet. So continue to write and I promise you will find your way. I am sorry if I sounded a little harsh but I have learned that if people are soft on you then you never really learn. I am only here to help. I do like you work and I believe that it will someday be something even greater then it all ready is. Good luck and continue to write.