z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

Purple Haze-2

by Vaibhav


"Hold this bitch!"

Three men held Clara, while Dimitry was being interrogated. It was noon and the episode was set up in the middle of a road.

"Who are you?", shouted a man.

Dimitry was too beaten up to give an answer not that he would have. Within minutes, crowd began to gather around. Two vigilantes came out of the police car nearby and the attention was diverted towards them. It seemed as though the only ones being bargained for were them.

Dimitry, regaining his senses, immediately moved towards Clara and rushed for the car parked on the roadside. Being a regular, hot wiring cars was a matter of seconds for him now. The chase continued for almost an hour with the cop car at our trail. Later, they took refuge at a motel to regather.

"It's time", Dimitry said in a silent tone.

Seven locations were marked on a map. Each at an hour distance from each other. Seven different doors were knocked and seven gunshots were fired. The entire Elite family was murdered before sunset. "Not being a professional killer, I never found gruesome conversation before killing people of any humour value",Dimitry murmered as he was driving the car on their way out of the city.

"It saves regret", he said after a brief pause.

"You didn't have to kill them"

Silence prevailed between them for the entire journey as Clara was neither ready not agreeing to their killings. For her the Elite family deserved to be respected. Being the ones who kept the Chains working even when it was not any profit to them for a singular purpose of keeping the ones who were already involved while protecting their identities.

"Men who climb upon dead bodies simply become one at the top", she remarked.

"I have no intention to become a dead body. Neither should you"

Clara, an associate of Michail, who was one of the top tier members of the coup, was sent on an urgent call to search for Dimitry Karkarov, the leaded of the factions who originally defected against the Elite family and went on a coup. Later, it was informed that the Elites have been murdered and seven people from among the defector took to acting as family members to prevent the chaos. Misinformation saved another day. Killing of seven random people of anti-elite sparked a fire like no other and resulted in a rampage. It took Clara twenty days to find Dimitry, who went missing soon after the insurgence. Mikhail was also a collateral of the revolt whose death blew away the spark and the revolt was crushed. The Elites, who now wanted Dimitry dead, sent his name to the streets.

Dimitry and Clara drove for the entire night. It was near six and the sun was on the horizon. Clara woke up. The car stood near the shore with Dimitry standing out facing the sun and holding a pistol.

As she walked towards him, Dimitry said, "A few years back, I was given this gun as a fail safe to kill myself if I couldn't bear the drudgery of the underground Chains. I later shot him with his own pistol".

"Well, who gave you that gun?"

"Dimitry"

The following realization filled Clara with disgust. She immediately ran towards her gun in the car and shot at his direction three time. All missed. The Elites were the only ones who knew the whereabouts of the person who ran the Chains. Not to mention, only few people had met Dimitry personally. With him dead, there will be a tug of power between sub-factions which were at war only ones before. When Dimitry was arrested by the police. That maneuver nearly set the entire machinery to fire and the people with the patience and perseverance to sustain that situation were all dead. It was said that one of them shot himself in his chair at the end of the deposition.

"Who are you?", Clara exclaimed holding the gun in his direction.

"There is no reason to believe that I am not Dimitry. But first we have to meet someone", remarked Dimitry as he moved towards a mansion nearby.

"There was not much to follow up to after Dimitry's death. Except that we were both looking for the same woman named Alexandra."

Alexandra was his subordinate who went missing. A search party was sent out and every member of the team did their parts. Later he was abducted from the middle of the road and was sent on a long haul. To Dimitry (deceased), she was an advisor who suggested the identity swap to go off the grid and relocate during the coup. Later, she proposed taking over Dimitry's identity to bring down the Elites as they were most vulnerable after the last coup. Causing another such coup would be causing another failure so use of a brute force was suggested, followed by an occuption of the land thrown into chaos by it's own owner.

Dimitry and Clara walked inside the mansion as their footsteps resounded in the corridor. The corridor gave a clear view of the beach and was fully ventilated. There was a woman sitting in the middle of the room playing with a child in her arms.

"Your retirement made the job a tad difficult for us Alex",said Dimitry.

"What? Need help with buildings", jested Alexandra.

A maid walked across the hall and carried the child with her. Alexandra walked up to us and gave Dimitry a photograph.

"She is Natasha, Natasha karkarov. Second of the karkarov blood, first in line to the succession after Dimitry's death. She was the reason you were marked in the Chains", said Alexandra.

She was the woman from the crib. "She was just a ....", began Dimitry and soon enough, reason and doubt left his mind. Dimitry heckled as he had just played in the hands of another karkarov and led her straight to Alexander. Not to mention, handled the power straight to her by killing the Elites.

A shootout occured. Clara was shot in the hand and Alexandra was killed. There were glass pieces all over the corridor and the floor was painted red. Clara ran outside and Dimitry followed soon after. This time there would be no tug of power only reminiscence of previously failed coups. Power was taken and there was blood on the streets. They were outnumbered so he surrendered. His face was covered with a cloth and they were both thrown at the back of a truck.

Dimitry was sitting on this knees with hands tied inside a tunnel. His mouth was tied but was able to see. It was the same tunnel with bricks on its wall.

"Dimitry karkarov!", said a feminine voice standing in the darkness.

"Not bad! But I expected you to be better than him and not kill the Elites"

She moved forward and Dimitry could now have a clear look at the woman. She was the same woman. In a freckling tone, she said, "I have something you need". A thud on the back of his head sent him to partial numbness and then a blackout. 


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Fri Jan 29, 2021 10:21 pm
SpiritedWolfe wrote a review...



Hi Vaibhav!

The first thing I noticed about this chapter was that it had suddenly shifted from first person to third person. It's not typical for a novel to make that shift right in the middle, even if it is consistent inside each chapter. The reason being is that each perspective has different effects on how the reader reads the chapter. First person tends to foster a closer connection between the reader and the narrator, since they're the ones telling the story, with their thoughts and feels woven into the narration. Third person, on the other hand, creates some more distance, but can give you more liberty on the information you give your reader since you're not strictly defined by the perspective character. I'd recommend choosing one and sticking to it, so not to jar the reader.

I think what I said in the last chapter can also be applied here. The pacing feels much too fast, because first Dmitry and Clara are in a street fight, then they're in a car chase, then they go to a hotel, then they kill seven dudes, then... so on. All of that is just in the first 10 paragraphs, and that's a lot of interesting plot that we want to know! You could probably make several chapters out of all of that on its own, but then there is even more. Slow down a bit. Give the reader a chance the breathe and get to know your characters. Develop each individual scene more (and a scene can be anywhere to a couple of paragraphs to an entire chapter).

As for actual plot in this chapter, I find myself even more confused than before. The chapter starts out with this character named Dmitry, which I assumed was supposed to be the Dmitry mentioned at the end of last chapter, who was arrested. However, it's later revealed that this is not the real Dmitry? That this is instead the same character from the first chapter? This was very confusing, and for such a big reveal, it felt quite anticlimactic and unimportant. This was shoved in with a ton of other information thrown our way in this chapter, and it's too much. Once again, slow down a bit, give everyone some time to breathe (including the characters!), and give us a reason to care about the world before you try to pull it out from under us with this talk of "the seven Elites were killed but replaced but now they're dead again."

Final thing, transitions are also super important so we can keep track of what's going on. Because this feels much like one moment the characters are doing something, and then suddenly in the next line they're nowhere close to where they were. This is another great place to slow down the action, give some more context, and transition between the two scenes. It will also help your poor narrator's head, because they amount of times they've blacked out in these two chapters is too much. It just feels like a cop out at this point.

I apologize if this comes across as harsh. It's never my intention to discourage you. I think you are building an interesting world and an interesting story, but its presentation needs some work.

I wish you luck with writing!
~ Wolfe




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Fri Jan 15, 2021 1:41 am
TheRealEuphoria wrote a review...



Hi, Katya here to review this short story for you! :)

I loved this story, it was action-packed and very dramatic. I see the vision, although there are some technical errors: punctuation and such.

Most of this short story is dialogue. Usually when using quotations, there should either be a comma, period, question mark, etc. before the end-quotes. For example:

"It saves regret", he said after a brief pause.

"You didn't have to kill them"


Instead, the punctuation should be:

"It saves regret," he said after a brief pause.

"You didn't have to kill them."


Also, the story was a little hard to follow. I had to re-read it a couple times. I'm not sure if this is a sequel to an original short story: if that's the case, I feel like you should've put it into one post. I felt a little bit confused. The storyline moves along so fast.

A shootout occured. Clara was shot in the hand and Alexandra was killed.


My first thought when reading this line is what happened to Alexandra during the gunfight? She was just talking fine two lines before, and then now within the next five sentences she's dead? I feel like you could've been more detailed, as an seemingly important character was killed. How intense was this shoot-out?

Lastly, the first line of this short story is:

"Hold this bitch!"


This is a very captivating line, but I was taken aback. I feel like you should've put a 16+ tag with this post. Other than those few things, I loved it. I'm going to go back and read the first one now! :)

Happy writing!




Vaibhav says...


Hey thanks for the review.
Glad you liked it. There are people shooting from outside as it is mentioned that characters are later captured.



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Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:14 pm



I love this!




Vaibhav says...


Thanks,
I am glad u liked it.



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Thu Jan 14, 2021 2:35 pm
piercenosser says...



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He who knows only his own generation remains forever a child.
— Cicero