I didn't like it. I'm not shy or innocent, I just found it revolting. There were elements to it that were good, like the smile one size too small, but toward the end it was just ridiculous, pornographic, and, I mean honestly, unrealistic.
The intro to a 20ker, and so it is not complete. 20,000 is a lot to post in one thread, I think. Merry Christmas. Don't read if you are the sensitive type.
The fire warmed them all. Mary saw the glow it lent her husband’s face, and her love for him returned with reluctant force. When he saw her gaze, the smile he wore seemed one size too small; the lips curled in on themselves, reflected the coldness in his eyes.
Mary looked to her parents. Older than even her recent memories allowed them to be - and both seeming smaller - her eyes wandered to their wine glasses. Sitting isolated upon the wooden table, the glass shined with the darkness of lights and bright embers. The conversation of her parents, joined by the witticisms of her husband, faded into whispers as she regarded the two drinks. Mary imagined the fat threads swirling within them, slithering and falling.
She thought about them for a moment longer before her mother retrieved them both, passed one to her father. Mary made a move to rise, to knock them from their hands and watch them break against the wall. Jack stood first. He was so much taller, so much bigger. And she loved him so much.
‘I’ll see if there’s anymore wine, folks,’ he said. ‘Sit back down, Mary. I won’t be long.’
Her father swirled the glass in his hand and frowned. He was so very small, now. So very, very small. His shoulders seemed childlike, and his neck barely able to support his head. The hands were so thin, too; not the strong, working hands they used to be. For all those reasons and more, Mary said nothing.
Her mother drank first, and soon her glass was empty. She looked to Mary’s father. ‘Drink up, you old dog,’ she laughed. ‘Jack’s getting more – drink while you can, and fall when you can’t, that’s what I say!’
Mary gave a small laugh. As her father raised his own glass, knowing her husband was preoccupied, she stood. ‘Dad, maybe you should give it a miss this time? You know what the doctor said – have some water instead? Would you like me to get you some water?’
‘Doctors know nothing.’ Her father made a face and sipped at the drink. Mary sat again, and the helplessness flooded her gut. ‘Doctors shmoctors, that’s what I always say. Those fancy degrees don’t hold their weight in tree bark, if you ask me. People got on fine before all those medical books and PHDs came about. All the big cheeses in history done fine without the monthly check ups and people yapping on at them to take two blue pills then three red pills, and to never ever take the red pills before the blue pills, and to take three blue pills then two red pills only if they’re prepared to fall down dead.’ He paused, admiring his own wisdom. ‘It’s those Jews that need the diagnoses. They brought all the diseases from where ever it is they lived and killed Jesus, took everyone’s money. I’m not saying the Holocaust was right, but you’ll not see me going back in time to fix things.’
‘Oh, be quiet, Arthur, you old goat!’ her mother said. ‘Always with the Jews. You just leave them alone now, you hear? You should have seen him the other day, Mary! Mary – are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Good.’ She continued. ‘When Harold came to the house and accused your father of stealing the morning paper, you should have seen him howl! He threw the paper down and I swear it, I’ve never seen him move from his chair so fast. He stuck his finger into Harold’s face—’
‘Harold is a “shmuck”,’ he sulked. Mary hoped Jack would just get the wine, that maybe he couldn’t do what he wanted. ‘Saying I stole his paper. I tell you, Martha, I didn’t steal that Jew’s paper! I don’t want anything to do with him and his circumcised equipment, let alone live next door to the man.’
Arthur finished his glass, and slammed it on the table with indignation. The disgust shivered down Mary’s back, made her muscles tense. She leapt from her chair – ‘I have to check on something’ – and scurried to the kitchen.
The light in the kitchen came solely from one window, even on opening the door. She heard a ragged breath, a stifled groan, a whispered 'Don't scream while I do you, bitch'. Mary’s eyes failed to adjust to the light, and she wondered if she willed it so. With a shaking hand, she reached for the light switch. The figure breathed hard in the darkness, like some waiting death, and the light switch seemed to her to be further away than usual, so that she must stretch to reach it.
The light came on. Mary recoiled a step in fear of her husband’s retribution, but there was none. He failed to notice the detonation of light, for his eyes were clenched shut, and his concentration intense. His face showed no sign of pleasure, but a deep determination.
In a shivering right hand, he held two wine glasses, filled three quarters of the way. In the other, Mary’s husband gripped his penis, and worked it rigorously. At his feet, a discarded photo of herself as a child.
Mary’s head felt light, and she regretted her impulse. In a moment, he would see her, and then she would get it. As she turned to flee the room, she heard his gasp. He aimed his penis as one wine glass, switched.
When his eyes flashed open, they filled with a fire that commanded Mary to remain as she was. Jack walked to the sink - his thing still jutting from an unzipped fly - wiped the drips from the rim of the glasses, and stirred them with a spoon as one would make tea.
I didn't like it. I'm not shy or innocent, I just found it revolting. There were elements to it that were good, like the smile one size too small, but toward the end it was just ridiculous, pornographic, and, I mean honestly, unrealistic.
Little-Lucy wrote:I thought it was pretty good.
Hi, Andy -
What's going on here? Is this fiction? Non-fiction? Doesn't matter, I guess. It has that, "Well, if The Great Me wrote it, it must be prose"-tone throughout. More than that, it comes off as a dabble in heavy-handed off-the-wall nonsense.
My main question is, so what? Why should I read any of your words? 20k is 20k words too many if all you're doing is rehashing the inherent "yuck" factor of humanity (pulling the standard punches, "shock factor," that has only been done by far too many writers--good and bad--to be effective any longer) and saying, "Criticize it at your peril."
You leave the reader out in this one, in my opinion, Andy, and by the sense I get from your stylistic approach to fiction, you can do far better.
All the best,
Brad
Hehe! Funny story. 
Let's go through the details?
1. The introduction doesn't achieve its ironic effect.
You have this wording, describing this place as an ideal place, and this place quickly goes to hell, which is cool. Okay. But it doesn't seem to go in a logical progression to ideal place to a twisted, warped place. If you want to make it dramatic, you HAVE to change the transition. There has to be a point where it turns from good, or even acceptable, to weird and twisted. Because right now, it's like, "WTF?"
2. Your characters are flat!
OMG.
I can take twisted stories and everything, but these characters are just cardboard cut-outs. You have the drunk, jew-hating father, the innocent woman, the cautious woman who can't control her husband, and the disturbed guy. Okay. Fine. I like characters that can grow. But these characters remain flat.
There's several reasons for this. You're dealing with a character story, no? So you first start with cliched characters. But you fail to go in deeper to them. The only guy who vaguely comes close is the father, with his dialogue. You really do nothing with the main character.
With character stories especially, you have to have several conflicts going on: the internal conflict and the external conflict. The external conflict is the plot, which is the reason why all these characters are connected. The internal conflict is the characters' baggage they bring to the external conflict.
So something is wrong with Mary's husband. Okay, fine. Then why is she just standing there like nothing is wrong? Why is she only worried about whether he sees her or not? Why isn't she THINKING??? She has no reaction to this conflict! And that's BAD.
So you have all this lovely conflict going on (and by lovely, I mean lovely after revising... right now, it's written in a very confusing way -- more on that later) and you're not going into the conflict! And it's maddening.
First off, remember that you have more than one character. All of these characters are going to have different reactions to the other characters and so on. So if the father is ranting, someone might be doing something else and so on. And not just physical reactions... someone migt be thinking something else, someone might be interrupting him, and so on. Making Mary think in this story -- even a little bit -- might be very nice indeed. So if there is conflict for one character, there will be different ways that the other characters react to his conflict.
3. Transitioning
Hahah... I shall be blunt. If you want to make the story less confusing, you're going to have to make the transitioning better. And if you want this, you're going to have to make the description better. So fill it out. Make Mary peer around the corner. Spurce it up in SOME way, and as your story continues, make the descriptions colder. So you start with warmth, you end with coldness.
4. Continuing?
Okay... so I was curious about your writing and read all the way through. Sue me. Anyway, I can safely say that, given an opportunity to read more of this story, I wouldn't. This is not a reflection of your writing ability, but actually of the way you set up your story. And why?
You have not defined a plot.
I know that a lot of people think, "Oh, it's a character story, so therefore I don't have to bother with a defined plot." Don't be one of these people! Character stories with no plot are simply long tangents about characters. With that said, there has to be something to hook us, to make us want to read more. This means you have to tantalize us and say, "Wow... this might happen soon." For instance, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, the main character gets beaten up by another black kid, the onlookers being white males with cigars. Now, this would ordinarily not hold our interest, except that this main character is SUPPOSED to be giving a speech he wrote in school. The sheer oddness of the situation, and the hint that this pattern continues throughout the book, compels us to read the rest.
Let's look at a different character story example... Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. In this one, Mr. Bingley comes to the country, where a woman has five daughters she wants to marry off. Conflict!
Let's look at another character story example... Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. This one starts off where our hero goes into war, disregarding what his family says, to be a hero. And then things go awry.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. What has to happen is you have to leave a cliffhanger for us to continue. At the moment, it makes us think, "Well, that's kind of random." But it doesn't propel us.
Okay. So I think that's my four main points. All in all, it was an interesting piece of work, and I hope that you'll be writing (and editing!) more soon. 
Edited to an R rating.
Yes, it ought to be R-rated, for further reference, if it involves anything so sexually graphic, Unrec.
As to the story itself, aside from that: I'm not certain what to do with it as a beginning, fragment. (Though I'd say posting a piece at a time is a good idea, with 20K.)
It was an absolutely revolting start, and barring a study in the perversity or grotesqueness in life, I'm not sure of its intent. A study in the smallness, irony of the holiday season? Study in the depravity of common man? Ah well -- I won't try to read too far into it.
Structure-wise, you have an inclination, I think, to put too much in one sentence, and it puts the meaning of some at cross-purposes. Phorcys noted it.
Older than even her recent memories allowed them to be - and both seeming smaller - her eyes wandered to their wine glasses.
Older than even her recent memories allowed them to be, both seemed smaller... [trail off? it's not really complete] Her eyes wandered to their wine glasses.
Id say this needed an R rating.
Ok, This was an intrguing story, it got better as it went on. However I felt the first two paragraphs seemed a little hard to read.
The fire warmed them all. Mary saw the glow it lent her husband’s face, and her love for him returned with reluctant force. When he saw her gaze, the smile he wore seemed one size too small; the lips curled in on themselves, reflected the coldness in his eyes.
wow... I couldn't find any typos in this, a job well done...
The descreption in this is wonderful... But I always liked description... Wonderful!
wow! thats really good! I liked the bit about the jews "circumsised equiptment" I laughed. so, now that i have posted a comment (i got the hint) YOU HAVE TO PUT THE REST UP! mwahahahaha!
but seriously, it is good. I love the detail you put into it.
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