Each step I take away from the abominations behind me brings me closer and closer to the pulsating walls of the alley ahead. Pushing ahead is the only option available though. The longer I take the closer the Earth gets to being completely annihilated or worse. He needs to be stopped, whether he is doing this on purpose or not, he must die. Either that or we all can kiss this existence goodbye. This power is beyond the control of any human or for that matter any being.
As I push further and further into the darkness of the alley way, the ground beneath my feet begins to tremble. Does he know I am coming? How could he? Unless…. he is allowing me to make it this far? No, no I refuse to believe that. I am in control, not him, never him.
Growls of impossible beasts and roars of terrors beyond my understanding emanate from behind me. I look back at the risk of being stricken by an ailment worse than death, and see… well nothing, nothing but a fog that now has enveloped the creatures that pursue me. Actually maybe the fog is the monster pursuing me, I don’t know and I definitely do not understand, not this world, not in the state it is in. Nothing is how it should be, and everything has gone further than it should. This is madness, made reality, his madness made reality.
I sprint as fast as I can manage and enter the part where the walls pulse and move as if an ocean had gotten confused and turned into a wall. Waves flow through it and I dodge and weave to avoid touching it. Nothing he creates should be touched, maybe his madness is contagious.
As I slip out of the reach of the contorting wall, a mouth rips open in the wall and tries to take a bite of me. It misses by only centimeters and I can feel its icy cold breath hit my skin. My mind shrieks in panic as a decomposing tongue slips through the jagged teeth of the mouth. It gets closer and closer and I can not move any further away. In contrast to the icy breath, the tongue is hot as lava when it streaks across my cheek, and I yelp as the agonizing pain devours my senses. The burning begins to spread across my face and down my neck, I scream as my vision goes black and the rest of my body goes numb. I fall to the ground and the pain is far more than I can handle and I fade to unconsciousness.
A cool breeze flows over my face and I open my eyes to see my curtains flowing over my window like a cape in the old Batman cartoons. The sun is shining brighter than I have seen it shine for a while. The soft fabric of my bed feels wonderful against my skin and I feel around for the comforter, but it is on the floor across the room. I begin to look at my room full of light from the large windows on the left hand wall. Looking at the 60 inch flat screen on the wall and the pictures that surround it, I feel as if I haven’t been here for years.
I sit up on the edge of my king size blue satin bed and scratch my head. Why is my head burning up? Sitting there I look across the floor and see scattered clothes everywhere, men and women’s. At this time my bedroom door creeps open and Cali is standing there looking at me, smiling behind a coffee cup of hot chocolate. Looking at her I can not help but think of what the catch to her marrying me was. She just stood there sipping slowly from her cup, her bright red hair every now and then catching the breeze and begins flowing like a brief flame trying to grow and dying quickly. She is wearing nothing but one of my black button up dress shirts, which hangs loosely unbuttoned from her shoulders, revealing just enough to get my imagination spinning wildly out of control. That sparks a sudden thought in my head. My imagination? Something about that sounds off. I shrug that thought off as she takes a few steps in and places the cup down on the desk to the right of the door.
“Miss Daniels, you do look quite lovely this morning.” I say as I stand and embrace her, wrapping my arms gently around her waist and looking in to her bright lime green eyes.
“Oh, how charming you are Mister Phillips, and I believe it is Misses Phillips now or are we already divorced. Because if we are I do suppose I could leave and go call Zig. You know he drools every time he sees me, maybe I should let him take a bite.” She says this all with a clever smirk, knowing that the fact that my own brother staring at my wife with his mouth physically open drives me fucking insane.
“No, we’re still married Misses Phillips, but you should know you are bit of a bitch sometimes.” As I say this I lean into kiss her.
“I know.” She says and leans the rest of the way to kiss me back.
Such a perfect start to a day, but why does it seem so off?
We spent the rest of that morning in the bedroom and the off thoughts that kept peaking into my mind earlier were no where to be seen. As the day drifted into the early evening, we cooked dinner together or at least we tried. As she was trying to make the sauce, I came up behind her and put my hands on her sides and began to wiggle my fingers like worms. She began to laugh and push me away, but I persist and she nearly starts crying.
“Stop it; you know I can’t stand being tickled. Stop it please. I swear I will slap you.” She yells trying get away from me.
“Try it.” I said knowing she would.
She whips around quick as lightning and swings her open palm at me and I catch it in my hand. My giant hands completely envelope hers and for moment it appears as if end of her milky white arm disappears into my dark caramel colored hands. I stop tickling her and she stops moving and we stare into each others eyes. As if planned by some cheesy romantically inclined divine being, the radio playing in the background begins to play No One by Alicia Keys. We both smile as I place my free hand on her hip and she pulls closer to me and lays her head on my chest. We sway back and forth and it felt just as if we were back at our wedding with that song and us dancing and not caring about the world. Our movement is as fluent and natural as that of the waves of the ocean. Waves of the ocean? There is that off feeling again.
From where we are in the dining room I can see the back sliding door, and for a brief moment I thought I saw something move.
“Chuck, can we please stay like this forever. Just dance and tickle, even though I hate that, and fail at cooking and all of this.”
“Yeah, we can. I think I would like that.” I say this, but in the back of mind something is telling me something is wrong, like that could never happen. Why is this happening? What is going on? What is wrong?
“Can I tell you something?” She says as she props her chin against my chest and looked up and back into my black peppered brown eyes.
“Yeah, baby, go ahead.”
“I love you Charles Howard Phillips.” She says and smiles at me, but I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking back at the sliding door. Something was moving, and it was in the backyard.
“Is something wrong?” She asked now looking worried and turning to look at what I was.
“There is someone in the backyard.” I said moving my hands and taking a slow step closer trying to get a better view.
“What? Are you serious?” She starts to follow directly behind me; I could feel one of her hands still touching the middle of my back. I took one slow step after another, getting closer and closer to the door. As we approached the door, I swept my had to the left to flip the outside light switch and as I flip it on, something moves back just out of reach of the light.
“Stay here. Okay? Do not follow me at all. You got that?” I look at her and she understands I am serious. She nods in agreement.
I slide the door open and step outside. “Hey,” I yell “What are you doing. This is private property. You are not supposed to be here.” I step closer and closer to the figure in the darkness and further and further away from Cali and the house. It takes a step closer, and I stop in my tracks. “Who the hell do you think you are man? This is my house, my property and I am telling you leave.” The figure takes another step and for the first time I see some features of the figure. I could hear a loud gasp come from the house.
It was a sickly gray man. His face was sagging horribly and his eyes were sunken deep into his skull. The hair on the top of his head was in terrible looking silvery gray patches. He raised one of his arms as if trying to reach out and grab me, but there was a good six feet between his hand and me. A huge flap of skin hung from his arm, looking like a twisted Walt Disney drew one of Dumbo’s ears hanging there.
“What the fuck.” I said and it must have been the magic words because at that it leapt at me and nearly got me, I was only just fast enough to fall backward out of reach. The guy just laid there as I got to my feet, and his skin began to ooze some kind of dark liquid. I watched in horror as his whole body morphed into the black ooze and sunk into the ground. I backed away from that spot, but did not take my eyes off of it.
As I got back to the sliding door, I tumbled through it and kept staring towards that spot. Cali took my face in her hands and turned my head to look at her. She had tear tracks down her cheeks as if she had been crying.
“Are you okay? What the fuck was that thing.” I can hear her saying this, but seeing that thing triggered something in my head. Memories begin to rush through my head. A wall moving like waves. A mouth with a decomposing tongue trying to bite and lick me. My skin burning. And this moment. With Cali saying ‘Do you hear that?’ and then… I am shaken back to reality when the ground beneath me begins to rattle in every which direction.
“What is going on?” She screamed. “Wait, what is that noise?” She looks out the door. “Do you hear that? And just as she says that something explodes outside the door. I look outside to see a giant tentacle coming out of the ground and smaller tentacles exploding from the pores of the giant one.
I remember now. All of this has happened before. I grab Cali and throw her out of the door way and onto the dining room floor just as a tentacle comes speeding at her like a javelin. It pierces my left side and I can feel my skin ripping and my ribs being shattered. The tentacle yanks to right, slamming me into the door and then back left putting more intense pressure on my wounded side. It pulls me outside and into the air and wiggles just like a giant worm. After a few seconds it stops and then tosses me across the yard.
I land twenty or so feet away from the house and I feel the crunch of several bones breaking on impact. I am beginning to fade, when I hear screams. Shrieks of shear terror coming from the house. I barely pull myself back to consciousness and I try to stand, using the leg that feels less like shit to get up, but just when I think it was okay my ankle snaps and I fall and slam my head to the ground. Still fighting the fade to blackness, I begin to crawl each movement making the next more and more difficult.
The monster then retreated from the house and descended slowly back into the ground. By the time I reach the now broken sliding door, the screams had long since ceased. It was eerily silent, and as I looked around the dining room, nothing could have prepared me for all I saw. The blood and bone fragments were everywhere. There were entrails here and there. Even brain matter on the ceiling. It left nothing of the woman I loved, but at the same time left everything. I crawl to the middle of the floor, where laying there was a single twisted and broken hand. The milky skin I knew was now gray and splattered with blood. I took it in my hand and at that moment one thing popped in my head. A single name glowed with flames signifying a hatred that I can now understand. He was responsible. He will die. I will kill Nathan Greene.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Cheers! I'll start with the longer work of the two you sent me, so let's get crackin'.
"“Miss Daniels, you do look quite lovely this morning.” I say as I stand and embrace her, wrapping my arms gently around her waist and looking in to her bright lime green eyes."
Since I can't put your text into a spoiler anymore and highlight my comments, I'll assign my comment to your paragraphs, which we'll differ by how the whole paragraph ends - meaning the shorter end in comparison to the paragraph below. I'll use only numbers to show which paragraph I mean, so bear with me.
1) I'll avoid checking for flow, since your style seems to be more of a compact and divided sentences to provide details instead of rhythmical jointing of sentences into a complex form. That said, I believe you've blown up your whole story starting with the very first paragraph, let me explain why.
"Each step I take away from the abominations behind me brings me closer and closer to the pulsating walls of the alley ahead."
- In the whole paragraph, you never say exactly what kind of the sight we see, so it is hard to imagine what kind of pulsating walls you mean and what kind of a valley it is. You're also mentioning abominations, we can imagine some kind of monsters, but because the focus of the MC is ahead and not behind, it's not a problem that they are not described much right now.
"Pushing ahead is the only option available though. The longer I take the closer the Earth gets to being completely annihilated or worse. He needs to be stopped, whether he is doing this on purpose or not, he must die. Either that or we all can kiss this existence goodbye. This power is beyond the control of any human or for that matter any being."
- At this point, I've lost my interest to read any further. You've basically laid out the whole situation in a cold manner, I feel no real emotions nor the atmosphere, it's just a text that tells me "This is another 'saving the whole world' with super powers, you amazed?" in a sarcastic way. Aside from mentioning what is completely obvious, we now know the whole situation like some kind of a mastermind in a strategy game that watches from above and doesn't really care what his units are feeling. No matter what I read on now, I won't feel any special about the world being saved, because I already expect that scenario. I would of course expect it after reading more about it later on, but if it had good emotional pre-build, I'd care about the world and saving it would actually feel good. Like this, with the manner you've told us it, without any proper prebuild, I've lost all the interest in what's going to happen later on. In short, your first paragraph is a story killer. I personally would start the story with a dramatic fight or something very local, without mentioning about the world or anything else; what's important is what's happening right where the MC is at the beginning, the fighting, emotional rush or cold sarcasm of the situation, whatever. You start small and build it big to make a proper explosion, no other way around if you want to impress your readers. I'd also pay more details to where the MC's focus is at - aside from that being more realistic, you let us imagine your story better without info dump (happens when you try to describe everything around, describing where MC's focus is is enough) and that has its advantages.
2) Definitely more interesting than your 1st paragraph, we also get to see a bit of an emotion from the MC, but it's a bit late with how your 1st paragaph went. I still am not sure what to imagine, but trembling ground is fairly alright; in my case, the first I see is a grass on a hill leading down to a valley.
3) I have a bit remarks to the way you write, but since that's your writing style and I shouldn't be picky about it, but you're switching between rational and emotional in a way that in overall it seems too 'distant'. We can't synchronize with your MC properly and remain as an eye from an above, that's not really feeling what the 'unit' itself is going through (Your character).
4) "I sprint as fast as I can manage and enter the part where the walls pulse and move as if an ocean had gotten confused and turned into a wall."
- I can imagine those pulsing walls better now, but you've completely lost me about the surroundings; aside from some random 'valley' and 'ground', I'm now at 'walls' (of which I know the most so far), but that's it. I'm not exactly sure where I am and just how bad the surroundings are. The best it gets is that I can imagine being in a tunnel surrounded by those walls, but you don't mention that anywhere, not clearly.
5) This is where your 'distant' writing hurts the most - you're writing the ongoing as an observer, not as the character himself. It's usable, but not for moments like this, not in first person style, because I don't really feel anything from it. I feel no proper atmosphere, no emotions, fairly distant from the character. What paragraph 5) describes is just kind of 'elsewhere' for me and I take it calmly, not minding if the character dies right there. Why should I? I don't sympathize with him, do not have any real reason to, not yet.
6) What's with the sudden surroundings description outburst? You haven't used it till now, you know, and that's quite many details in comparison to before. Your stylistics hurt a bit, however; you could joint many of those sentences and make them a bit easier to read with the flow instead of dividing them so much. I'll refrain from showing how I mean it, because I'll end up writing in my own writing style and that won't help your style.
- You mean "into" her bright eyes, right? While this is the first grammar mistake I'm pointing out, I might have picked on a bit more as might others, but it's hard to differ between your style of stylistics and real grammar mistakes to be sure what's wrong or not.
10) I'm jumping the paragraphs now for a reason; you're basically giving us a burst of details on where he is, how she looks, who is she, and so on. As I said, in comparison to the beginning, this is one heck of a detail writing. While I'm irked by the stylistics at times, specially the lack of jointing sentences to make them repeat much less and save us some of patience.
"Such a perfect start to a day, but why does it seem so off?"
- In addition to the 7) "That sparks a sudden thought in my head. My imagination? Something about that sounds off. I shrug that thought off ....." this is probably the best atmosphere detalization so far, I'm not kidding. I can finally feel the atmosphere of "This is nice, but it shouldn't be so. Something's wrong. What is?". There was no atmosphere up till now and that's a shame, every moment should have some atmosphere, your beginning's lacking it and it hurts the impression of your story. While I could see many ways how to improve even the atmosphere in this moment, where I can finally sense some of it, I'll leave it up to you and your style to figure out how to do it better, if you decide to. I'll just advise to try and "! be ! " in your character in his own shoes, feel the atmosphere, and skillfully joint it with what he sees/smells/feels (in short what he ! senses ! ). First person writing's supposed to be ! personal !, not distant or observant like 3rd style (Which, mind you, can gracefuly describe whole atmosphere and emotions too, personalize us with the character, and it's supposed to be weaker at that than 1st person).
11) "We spent the rest of that morning in the bedroom and the off thoughts that kept peaking into my mind earlier were no where to be seen."
- 'Off thoughts' ? Really? I don't have to bother with your specific stylistics here anymore, that's plain wrong. It will be just 'thoughts'.
13) "Waves of the ocean? There is that off feeling again."
- Not 'off feeling', but 'bad feeling'.
14) "“Yeah, we can. I think I would like that.” I say this, but in the back of mind something is telling me something is wrong, like that could never happen. Why is this happening? What is going on? What is wrong?"
- You are needlessly repeating what we've heard and know already. You could settle this by just saying that 'you were father uneasy about all this', something along those lines.
16) "As we approached the door, I swept my had to the left to flip the outside light switch and as I flip it on, something moves back just out of reach of the light."
- 'I swept my ! head !'. I'll actually pardon myself and show a little about what I meant by stylistics.
"As we approach the door, I sweep my head to the left and flip the switch for the backyard light, but as I turn it on, something moves back just out of the reach of the light."
- Now, do notice that I fixed your past tense to present tense, but I could as well fix it to full past tense too. The problem of your work so far is that you're switching between past/present and at some places, like "“Try it.” I said knowing she would." followed later on by "“There is someone in the backyard.” I said moving my hands and taking a slow step closer trying to get a better view." . You've switched your time in a short gap, that's not how it works. Describing the past prior to present event is fine, but you're at 'present' event since him waking up, don't throw any of that 'past tense' just like that. Aside from the tenses issue, which is spread across your whole work, notice the difference of stylistics between mine version and yours. I'm creating more sentences, but I joint them, so the reader doesn't make a full stop and can orientate well, not getting confused or overloaded by the length of details, and have it easier to 'ride on a flow', meaning he doesn't abruptly end his flow of reading or has to reread it to understand what's going on.
17) "“Stay here. Okay? Do not follow me at all. You got that?” I look at her and she understands I am serious. She nods in agreement."
- You should have 'that' between 'she understands' and 'I am serious', but that's not even so annoying as the fact that you basically repeat the same twice, not to mention it feels off.
"I look at her and she nods in agreement after a short pause, clearly understanding that I'm serious."
- Once again, notice the difference of stylistics and flow.
18) "I slide the door open and step outside. “Hey,” I yell “What are you doing. This is private property. You are not supposed to be here."
- Alright, the marks at the end of the sentences are mising and you could actually improve it, for example like this : "Hey! What are you doing? This is a private property, you're not supposed to be here!"
"I step closer and closer to the figure in the darkness and further and further away from Cali and the house. "
- The repetitions are more annoying than they are useful, mind you. There is no need for you to double mention what we clearly understand, and if you want to point it out so badly, there are tons of other ways, more interesting ways, to do it. English is a very wide language, don't be shy to use it, don't dwell on the simpliest.
"“What the fuck.” I said and it must have been the magic words because at that it leapt at me and nearly got me, I was only just fast enough to fall backward out of reach."
- And you were in present tense just a moment ago, you know. Pay more attention to your tenses, there are tons of moments like this before and I'm sure there are many after this, but I won't point them out anymore, you definitely do know what's wrong.
Allow me to jump through the rest of the paragraph and actually point out the rest in general. You should decide to which time you want to stick, I really mean it. Your present tense and past tense switching only makes your work worse. Your present tense's too weak, you write more observant, more 'unpersonal' and 'distant' than the present tense should be, so past tense's clearly better for you, but your stylistics and unexplainable switches between emotional past and 'calm and cold mannered description' of something, as if you were describing a barely to you related photo to somebody in real life, don't help at all either. Aside from the huge story killing at the very beginning, this could be a fairly interesting story to read, but not in the way it is right now, not with that beginning, the stylistics, the switching of tenses, and its eventual inability to produce a proper atmosphere, not to mention the personification of a reader to the MC ( Now, to stop for a second breathe, this is the most important fault you have right now; the lack of personification of the reader to the MC. Because it's so unemotional and distant, with all the switches, you're not letting the reader to actually 'be there' and go through the same as strongly as the MC does in his universe, eventually making the reader not really care what happens to the MC. Him being devastated at the end of the chapter was nothing to me, I didn't sympathize with him as much as I could if it were written better, the cold mannered description of the fact, that his wife was literally trashed, didn't feel any horrific to me, not with how weak your present tense is and not with how cold your past tense is. I could imagine him succumbing to hatred, but not as strongly as you probably saw it in your mind, and I didn't feel any part of his hatred in me, which kind of points to the fact, that your story failed in captivating the reader (Me in this case).
I'd like you to take a note, that you don't have to take everything I wrote seriously, take only what will help you and ignore what you think is wrong, but first do please try to understand why I wrote the review like this. I spent a great deal of time and effort into this review, I did it to help, meaning I didn't just blabber my mouth. If you'd like some more explanations and advices, don't mind dropping me a PM.
Best regards,
~Shinda
I am just leaving replies as I read through your longer review. In the first part its any alley not a valley. Sorry, probably could of chose a better word.
Sorry that the text and formatting is so weird. I typed it in microsoft word. If you can not read it because of the formatting, but still want to read it, leave your email and I will send you my original copy. All in all, I kind of like this story so I am looking for some serious feed back, good or bad. And as always, Thanks and I appreciate it- AfroUnicorn