Purgatory:The Space Between Ch.1

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm Knight Hardy here on a mission to ensure that all works on YWS has at least two reviews. You will probably never see this but....Imma do this anyway.

Anyway let's get right to it,

Purgatory, a place that is neither Heaven nor Hell. Just as I am neither angel nor demon. As one of the cursed immortals of the Earth I wander the continents in search of answers as to who I am and what I did to deserve this.

Well this is a really intriguing passage there to kickstart that particular situation...it looks like the main character here is going to be quite interesting in how they don't appear to be some kind of in betweens species from angels and demons and also happens to be immortal...and talks of the whole thing as a curse of sorts...and well, that certainly gets your attention quite quickly here.

Children play on the street except one; she stands on the sidewalk wishing to disappear. Over one eye is a bandage hiding what is there, only i know what is there. Ladies whisper to each other, "Who is she?" and "I don't remember seeing that child." I am the only one that remembers, only yesterday she was one of those children playing on the streets; dodging cars and laughing with friends. Now no one is her friend, because they don't recall her mother and father chatting with them about the weather and how much they loved spring. Only I know where they are; in a now deserted apartment complex. I expect that their skeletons are still lying there; their empty eye-sockets staring and their mouths open in a silent scream. What killed them I wonder? Was it the terror of the sight before them or the thing itself that split open their chests and tore out their beating hearts? Sometimes I ponder at the question of who the monster is? Is it the Face of Justice with its two sided skull of punishment and reward? Or is it the thing that it turns people like me and that child into; an immortal that lives forever but isn't alive. A being that is banned from the Gates of Heaven and shut out from the Depths of Hell. We are the souls that are in Purgatory; the things we did in our past lives have forged a chain binding us here to the sorrows that plague humanity. Now till the end of time itself i am forced to drag behind a man weary of life but too tired to die. His sorrows are my sorrows and his sins are carried on my back. After his body withers away the iron collar around my neck will then attach to someone else. I am invisible; a spirit with a broken pair of black wings on my back. Since my own body died; i cannot reincarnate. The weight of my sins became too great for my soul to fly. This is the same fate that the girl is doomed to, she will not have wings. Her mark will be specialized according to her crimes and wrongdoings. Mine symbolizes something that i did long ago, so long that i do not remember it. Now i am searching for the Eternal Record; the history of every soul and every era of the world. That is where I must go and right the wrong i did so long ago.

Oooh, I like how this uses the girl here almost as a bit of an example to convey the situation this character is stuck in. And well, as far as premises for situations like this one go, this is really well done, I'm already very much hooked here. The idea of a third category of beings forced to eternally endure suffering until they can somehow right their wrongs is really interesting and not something I've seen all that often before. All in all, you capture the emotional state of this man quite well and the casual descriptions of the horrors that this man has now clearly grown quite accustomed to. Its a powerful starting scene. The only issue I have if this whole thing being in one big blob...this would be that much more effective if it got split into a couple of paragraphs here.

Other than that, this is a very solid start to a story here.

Aaaaand that's it for this one.

As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.

Stay Safe
Harry