Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.
The heavy thud of my boots collided with the iced over pavement. I stalked down the empty, lonely street, looking in every direction waiting for something to stick it's ugly head out. The street was so familiar, I had walked down the road many times before. On my way to school, walking to the store for my favorite drink, and late night runs to a friends house. It was so quite, deathly quite. Each step I took echoed through the empty houses and cars.
I held my weapon close to my side waiting for the moment where I could use it. There was a black SUV at the end of the stretch of road. I put my cold hands on the dirty glass. Rubbing the dirt on the outside away I peered through the window. The seats seemed clean and like they hadn't been touched in a while. I pulled at the handle on the door and it opened with a soft click; I slid into the seat, and looked around for a key. Upon looking every where else I found the key in the ignition. Shaking off my stupidity I started the vehicle. It purred like a kitten as it sped down the icy road.
I drove until the SUV began to sputter and finally came to a stop with a low hum. I sighed heavily and slid out of the vehicle and jumped onto the road. My eyes searched the quiet surroundings for any sigh of where I was, which was close. After hours of walking down twisting and winding roads my feet cried for rest. A bang echoed behind me and I gasped softly hiding behind a cluster of garbage cans. I peered over the metal tins and saw the creature wondering around, making random moans and snarls.
I inched my way towards a car that was parked in a driveway. I hid behind it and waited for it to pass. It stumbled past the car and I stepped silently towards it. From behind it I slipped my knife from it's holster. The blade came slamming down from above with extreme force, sinking into the mush of the head with a disgusting sound. It fell to it's knees then to the ground with a thump. I sighed in relief and continued my journey down the street. More memories began flooding into my mind like a damn had broke and the water was rushing in, drowning all signs of reality. I was back there now, back in time through memories but it felt like more.
“Why is this movie so sad?” A quite chuckle broke through the silence.
“I don't know.” I turned and smiled brightly at the boy sitting so close yet so far away. He showed his straight white teeth at me and we turned away at the same moment. The movie went on and I didn't lose my smile. Then slowly something crawled on to the screen, something that didn't match what we were watching. I gasped and looked back at the boy.
“What the hell?” but as the words left my lips I realized I was talking to no one. He was gone. “Mark...Mark.” It came out as whispers but I was gradually getting louder. “Mark! Where the hell are you! Mark!” I jumped from my seat and flipped around and it wasn't seats I saw it was the dirty bloody mouth of a corpse. “Shit!”
I pushed it to the ground and swung out the sword that was hanging from my hip. It came over my head and sunk into the head of the creature. They were all around, circling like sharks ready to feast on a piece of injured flesh. Each time I swung my blade it made contact with something like a head or a neck and as it did it would slid straight through like slicing through butter. I spun around to run and one grabbed my arm and widened it's nasty jaws. A shriek of fear came from my mouth as I shoved it away with every ounce of my strength. My body slammed into the ground and I yelled ripping out a pistol from my boot and sliding the safety off. Each time the trigger was pulled a bullet pierced through something whether it be a skull or a chest.
Several of them fell and didn't get up again but it seemed as though one would fall and two more would take it's place. I pulled the trigger and it made a click in the place of a bang. Looking at the gun in terror I stood and grabbed my sword swiftly and started hacking away desperately. I stopped and took in my surrounding; it was hopeless. I stared down and my blade, shining with blood and dropped it. It fell with a cling and next to it my knees had sunk to the ground. Looking up at the sky past the monsters trying to feast on me I whispered.
“I'm sorry..”
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140,377 Literary Works • 673,127 Reviews
Hi, there! Lefty here to review!
This was an interesting, intriguing read. Your story had a very strong, sort of post-apocyliptic feel to it which was awesome! I love stories with a strong feel. And with that, onto the nitpicks:
I really liked the first sentence and it drew me in, however, I think "icy" would be better than "iced-over" as it slows it down a bit.
The three times you say "quite" it should be "quiet".
In the first paragraph there are a lot of "I"s. This could be easily fixed by doing a couple different things. I will be using these sentences as an example: "I put my cold hands on the dirty glass. I rubbed the dirt on the outside and peered through the window."
1. Combine the sentences. "I put my cold hands on the dirty glass and rubbed the dirt on the outside, then peered through the window."
2. Put some "ings" in there. "Putting my cold hands on the dirty glass, I rubbed the dirt on the outside and peered through the window."
Very nitpicky, but when you say "I raised it and my blade slammed into it's skull." generally "slammed" means hitting something but not necessarily going into it. Jammed or sunk might be better.
onto, one word.
pushed not push.
Thats it! Not too many and a few were just suggestions/opinions while the others were just some typos. Not too bad!
Now, I'm intrigued by your story (as said above) but at the same time I'm confused. It was all fine until they were in the movie theater. At first I was thinking it was sort of a Thriller kind of thing where it starts out in the movie then becomes real life, but then she ended up in the movie? I wasn't sure I completely understood that. Maybe I wasn't supposed to! Perhaps we're supposed to be confused and we learn more about it later. It's ok for your readers to be confused, as long as you explain within a reasonable amount of time. I'm certainly interested in where the rest of the story will go and how she will get out of the mess she's in at the end of the chapter!
You write well and I like your style. I'm curious to learn more about the main character. Decent first chapter. Keep up the good work!
Have a nice day,
-Lefty
Omg, thanks so much for the review and I like the nitpicky thing that you do. Um I'll go back and edit it a bit more and see what I can come up with and fix those darn typos. Um with you being confused about the theater part well it was supposed to more of a flash back type of moment and it will go into more detail about how those work for her later so it'll get cleared up more later. Haha that was super repetitive oh well. :p Thank you for the complements and I'll be posting chapter three soon. 0.o
I enjoyed reading your story; I’m assuming this is the first chapter but I’m not completely sure. It’s quick to get into the action, which I like, and there’s definitely loads of potential here. However, I did notice a few ways in which you could improve it.
Your storytelling style isn’t very smooth. By this I mean you use a lot of simple sentences, such as “There was a black SUV” “I put my hands” “I rubbed the dirt.” It’s almost like you’re saying, “This happened and this happened and this happened…” Now sometimes this can be used for dramatic effect, but I think this first chapter could be better if you were to link up some of these short sentences. For example:
“I pulled at the handle on the door and it opened with a soft click. I slid into the seat and looked around for a key.”
This could be changed to: “I pulled at the handle on the door and it opened with a soft click; sliding into the seat, I looked around for a key.”
I noticed you have a tendency to begin a lot of sentences with “I.” Why not make it more varied? For example, instead of saying “I rubbed the dirt on the outside away and peered through the window” you could say “Rubbing the dirt on the outside away, I peered through the window.” That too would help it read a little more smoothly, and make it seem less repetitive.
One other suggestion I have is that you have more paragraphs to really build up suspense. For instance, you could start a new paragraph after the echoing of her footsteps (in the first paragraph) – then it would give the next sentence (the bit with the weapon) more of an impact. The fight scene with the zombie should probably be split up into more paragraphs to make it more dramatic and give it real impact.
Some minor errors I noticed:
You use “it’s” instead of “its” in places such as this: “my blade slammed into it's skull.” “It’s” is short for “it is” and “its” is like “his” or “hers” so it should be “its skull.”
“A quite chuckle broke through the small silence.” I think you meant “quiet” not “quite.” Also, I was wondering what a small silence was? Why not simply have “through the silence?”
“I push it to the ground” – you suddenly changed tense here for no apparent reason. I think you meant “I pushed it to the ground.”
The content of the story was good (although you could definitely give it more impact by merging the sentences and splitting up the paragraphs) and I loved your flashbacks (which were effective and also helped explain the protagonist’s goal) The last sentence was really powerful and it leads the reader to wonder: who is the main character really apologising to, and how will she get out alive? Hopefully I helped, and didn’t discourage you too much!
Oh no, thank you so much for the review. I always love feed back. With the basic grammar mistakes like the "it's" and "its" the program I use automatically fixes stuff like that and is usually wrong and I don't catch it often so thank you.
I really appreciated the help with making my story flow more and making the sentences sound more fluid. I have trouble with that and actually my amazing English teacher is helping mw and this will help a lot. All together there needs to be more writers like you looking out for us. So thank you again and I will post soon.
P.S. it was the first chapter.