Stairs

love the chaos!!

chaos chaos and more chaos!!

its like if rome was burning and the people in the streets started singing a requiem and then adding on some rocky horror songs inbetween!

overall the constant, nervously fast pace was great, I just couldnt get over that.

The images, repetition and stressing of inflection within each stanza and phrase was just fantastic!!!

I feel ashamed of my weird little poems compared to this!!

Great Job, Classic, Star!!

Exe's and Oh's, Eraqio.

**shivers** Pop, dear, how dare you not send this?! It's so scary and just perfect in a really creepy way...Oh wait, I promised you a review didn't I? Well, I'll try my best!

Descriptions - I would describe the stairs a little more before jumping into the story. This might just be me, but I'd like for a rather smoother beginning. Maybe have her standing outside the tower (for some weird reason, this story takes place in a tower in my head ), and staring up the window? I'd like for you to display a little fear or maybe even joy? Joy at staring at the top, at the impossible dream? Then, the pain she faces on the stairs would be contrasting. And, contrasting stuff in horror stories, especially extremes like joy and pain, just tend to add to the scariness...hehe not that you need any help with that. Anywayz, I think I got distracted again... Anywayz, I think there's more than enough description anywhere else...In fact, adding more might lessen the creepiness...

Plot - It seems really detached, yet that seems to work really well here. It seems like we are following someone's thought process...This is just my personal preference, but I would separate the paragraphs even more. Like you combine the part about voices to children. I would add a paragraph break right after "growing voices" and before "Like children". For some reason, this makes the story more like it's jumping from thought to thought, something that I love about it. Similarly, I would add a paragraph after "like the stairs" and before "Yes the wall stands like the stairs.

Mood - Creepy!! Great job conveying it though! You managed to make it subtle, and the repetition helped a lot. I don't really have any suggestions on this! It was really amazing and I'm still a little creeped out...

Characterization - Hmm, well, I don't really know much about the MC, however I'm not too sure that you need to describe him/her...But, y'know, I would like you to characterize the stairs a bit more, if you can...For instance, say that they have a malicious intent, or that they're an endless cycle of pain...Or maybe even that the walls refuse to help you up, they wish for you to fall, and all that....You get the idea right?

Overall - The beginning was a bit rough. I liked the first paragraph however I wouldn't use it as a starting point. As I said before, describe the setting a bit...Anywayz, great job on this! Gold star for you! And, you better send this to the horror magazine thing...These are just really minor nitpicks, I guess...so sorry for the really bad review! I told you I couldn't shred any of your horror works...They're wayyy too good! XD

Let's see... nitpicks first?

[quote]Stairs. Stairs? There are many stairs.


So Do you think too would work better here? On second glance... no, no so works just fine. many stairs. Don’t fall. Each step goes up. They could go down, but they don’t. Only up. One, two, three. Up, up, up. The stairs that go up. They climb higher. Or is it just you? Yes, perhaps it’s just you. You’re going up. The stairs stand still. I love the atmosphere here, very much like stairs, gradually getting higher and higher until we reach the climax.


But do they really stand at all? Stairs stand. Standing stairs. Walking up the standing stairs. Up the stairs that stand.


Voices grow louder. Voices? Yes, the voices. The ones that grow louder as you go higher. Higher up the stairs. The stairs that stand. The voices grow. Growing voices. Like children. The growing voices like the growing children. The small children. The ones with weak arms. They play games. Children play games. You play games too. Games with the children with weak arms.I completely love the repetition, it's great.


Children aren’t strong. They have weak arms. Weak-armed children. Like the growing voices. The voices that are growing louder now. You hear the voices. They remind you of the children. The voices are the children. The weak-armed children. The ones that play games with you. The ones that lose.Great ending, wow, I'm not doing too well at this nit-picking business am I? lol


Rain outside. Too much noise. Your ears hurt. The stairs keep rising. Or is it just you? Water dripping somewhere. Drip, drip, drip. Too much noise. Like the children. The children make too much noise. The ones that lose the games. They make too much noise. When their weak arms break, they make noise. Like the water outside. Drip, drip, drip. Creepy


You trip on a step. On a step? A step. The step of a stair. A standing stair. You trip. You were rising, but you tripped. Try to grab a wall. The wall that stands. Like the stairs? Yes, the wall stands like the stairs. You can’t grab the wall. Trip. Head hits a step. The step of a stair that stands. Your head feels sticky.The repetition once again, is simply fabulous.


Touch your head. Your head feels sticky. There is something sticky on your head. Look down. Down on the step. The step of the stairs. The red step of the stairs. The red is sticky. The sticky is red. Blood? Blood like the rain. Drip, drip, drip. Too much noise. Voices of the weak-armed children grow louder. More noise. Blood falls. Drip, drip, drip.


Like the children. The ones that lose. The ones that lost. They played with you. Played games. They lost the games. The weak-armed children lost. You broke their bones. The voices cried. You heard their blood. Drip, drip, drip. Like the rain. The rain fell like the children. Over the edge. Down, down, down. Not like the stairs. They only go up. But you are the one that goes up. The stairs stand still.


Walking up the stairs. Rain falls. Blood drips. You keep walking. The stairs stop. They end. You’ve reached the end of the stairs. Stairs end? Well, stairs stand. Like the walls. So they can end. Can walls end? But you stop. You open up the door. The doorknob is cold. Cold like the rain. Drip, drip, drip.


The room is dark. The voices are loud. They hurt your head. That makes you angry. You walk forward. The voices get louder. You smile. Want to play a game? Play a game with the weak-armed children. They’ll lose. They always do.Really great ending

I enjoyed this mightily, you have a great pacing and it's well written, shall we:

Where lies the foundations of our fantasies?
The plot was great. Well, not really the plot, but the way you carried it out. The pacing was incredible, the pacing was probably the thing that made the plot, well... the plot. For the plot though, you did really well. You manged to take something that is pretty normal and create something great out of a horrible subject matter.

And what of the small hours, what of those that slip by un-noticed?
Scary stories. They can be very hard to pull off. You, on the contrary, did that excellently. The pacing and repetition played a huge part in that.

Drip, drop, drip, drop, drip, drop
Repetition can be extremely annoying. Especially when you're dealing with sentence fragments. Somehow you managed to pull it off. Those sentence fragments... Your writing certainly wasn't flawless, and there are a few things I'd fix, but the flaws make this piece better, so I won't suggest anything.

I love how symbolic the stairs are in this piece. How we feel as though we are climbing the stairs, with each sentence we are taking a step, until we reach the top, only with your story it seems more like a spiral staircase, we have no idea what's at the top and as we climb higher
and higher
and higher
and higher
and higher
and higher
and higher
there is more risk of us falling, until we reach the very top, and then someone jumps out as us.

So basically this was great, there are a few thing I would suggest to change it, but its flaws are what make it, well... it.

~Kirsten

he he, I love it! The atmosphere is awesome! I like the short sentences and the repeating... normally it would do my head in, but you pull it off perfectly!

*Evi alert*

Hey anti-pop! Here as requested. I see that you shall be my competition for Clo's Monster Mash? Bring it. You're going down.

Hehe. Just kidding.

So, normally I'd be going into cardiac arrest because of these fragments, but I have to face them in this piece-- they add so much to the character. *shudder* As for creep factor, you get a 10/10. My arms are weak.

I suppose I shall have to figure out a way to critique this without going completely nuts on you, shan't I? Hmmm. Here we go!

Atmosphere:

Very, very effective. The best things about this atmosphere are the short sentences--which I commend you to be able to write; I would be spazzing at the fragments--and the use of second-person. Second person is hard to pull off, because you aren't manipulating your own imaginary character anymore; you're attempting to manipulate your readers into thinking what you're telling them to think. Make sense? Anyhoo, you pulled this off beautifully. The atmosphere is epically creepy.

Charactarization:

Well, going into the short fragments, this is done very well. I could ramble on about adding something else into the story to add depth, like personality traits of our monster, but it just wouldn't work. I'd love to be able to freak out and go into major fix-up mode on you, but this story has such a delicate balance that I'm afriad to tip it in the wrong direction.

Nitpicks. You knew it was coming.

Weak-armed children. Like the growing voices. The voices that are growing louder now. You hear the voices. They remind you of the children.

The Children aren’t strong.

But you are the only one that goes up.

Rain falls. Blood drips.

Can walls end? But you stop.

Oh good God. This was really interesting to read, and what I think it means scares me. But then again, many things do.
The repetition is good here. You're one of the few people that can actually pull it off well. I commend you for that.
The sentence fragments did hurt my head, but they were used geniusly. I feel like you really captured the essence of a crazy person. xD
The references to the children and the stairs and the blood and the rain really put the freak-out out factor into this, in the subtlest of ways. I didn't really get it until the end, and then it made me feel really uncomfortable and vulnerable. And the way you said "you" just made me feel like a really horrible person.
You get a gold star for making me feel.

Thanks, Hannah and Prokaryote!

This was one part that threw me off. Up until this part, the 'you' parts didn't put me off, but this part, shoving 'they remind you of' something, kind of just bothers me.

As for the actual content of your story, there doesn't seem to be much. I'm not sure how well the writing style relates to the plot. Because the repetition pads everything, there isn't actually much meat here. Mostly fat.

Protip: You shouldn't apologize for your stuff.

But other than that, this was strangely hypnotic. Ever read the poem "The Bells," by Edgar Allen Poe? It's one of the only poems I've read that has actually stuck with me. Just the repetition, in a sort of sing-song way. Your story reminds me of that a lot.

It's weird, really -- instead of killing flow, the fragments and repetition create a sort of rhythm that drives the reader on. Like a drum beat, if you will. Or someone walking up a set of stairs, one step at a time.

As for the actual content of your story, there doesn't seem to be much. I'm not sure how well the writing style relates to the plot. Because the repetition pads everything, there isn't actually much meat here. Mostly fat.

I like this kind of fat, though.

Prokaryote

CREEP. Y!! Hahaha, this was for Clo's monster contest, yes? You definitely got the 'monster' part through at the end. -thumbs up-

It's really powerful, the way you've used the small sentences. I mean, it's kind of annoying sometimes, but that's part of the message. To be honest, I skipped some of the sentences though, so be sure to put the most important ones at the beginning and ends of paragraphs. xDD Sorry, short attention span. xP

You hear the voices. They remind you of the children.

The ones that lose. The ones that lost.