Scary, Right? (18+)

"Hey there friend," A girl whispers one stormy, cold late winter night while she's sitting in her bed. She grins when she feels the familiar shiver of cold creep up her legs. "Yes, I'm talking to you. Do you want to hear a scary story? It's very, VERY scary, I have to warn you. You might DIE of fright!" She giggles dryly before beginning her tale.

"Once upon a time, on a cold stormy night, when the rain was pouring and the thunder was so loud no one would EVER hear you SCREAM, a girl was sitting on her bed. She was smiling and talking to what would have looked like herself, but she wasn't alone. There was a entity, a spirit in the room with her, and she'd known this 'ghost' for a long, long time. Ever since it had followed her home from her second grade field trip to the towns oldest graveyard, actually." By now the cold shiver had turned into a freezing shake, and the girl's smile had grown twice it's size. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a black leather bound book with no print on the cover.

She ran her fingers across the cover as she continued her story. "The girl was quite sick of the ghost, who'd knock on her walls and moan and scream all through the night. Her parents could never hear this so when she'd tell them they wouldn't believe her. The poor girl suffered for years, hardly ever getting any sleep and always feeling like she was being watched. It got so bad until she couldn't deal with it anymore. Something had to give." She almost choked on her laughter, which was beginning to sound more sinister by the second, as she opened the book, in which had what looked like ancient latin hand writing.

The air shifted and the girl giggled more. She could almost taste the fear in the air.

"After a while she reasoned that someone had to go. It was either it or her. Considering the fact that her life was shitty already, she decided she would end her life. It would be simple, quick and easy. All she had to do was take one too many sleeping pills with a few sips of her mothers brandy, right? Well it turned out that her parents weren't ready to lose their baby girl. She was committed to an insane asylum for being out of her fucking mind when she cried to her mother that a ghost was driving her to suicide." The light sing-song voice that was the voice of the girl starting becoming softer and sharp, deadly.

"So she spent a year in lock up on suicide watch. Wouldn't have been so bad if the spirit hadn't had followed her there too. The scratching, moaning and screaming made the girl want to rip her hair from her bloody scalp. She wanted to take two pens and impale her ears with them, literally." She was now chanting in a low voice a demonic sounding incantation between sentences. The entity felt itself being drawn to the book, to those evil pages. It wondered what was this teen doing to it.

"Now what do you think she figured she was going to do when she was finally set free?" She paused before clapping and smiling,"Yes! That's right! She was going to get rid of that vile being once and for all! So guess what she did?" Another pause. "Right again! She went to her local voodoo priestess and obtained The Book Of The Dead. Why? So she could send that wretch to HELL! " With that a blaze of red hot light flooded the room and the ghost felt itself being sucked down into the pages, until the room felt light and empty. Sighing the girl snapped the book closed. "Well technically she didn't send it to hell, she only trapped it inside the book, never to be free again. But I guess you could call being confined to the pages of a book hell." She smiled and put the book back into her bag. "Scary, right?"

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Points: 5211
Reviews: 184

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Sat Feb 02, 2013 3:33 pm

veeren wrote a review...

Hey Dizzy!
Happy belated YWS welcome!
If you don't know how I review, I pick out every small little detail I can find and bug you about it until you lose your sanity. Fun right?

But before I get onto that, let me give you a few tips to help you with this piece.
- Try making the reader a character. Since you're, in essence, speaking to the reader, make it feel that way. Like int the beginning, instead of writing "She Says", write "You hear the cold voice behind you" or something.
- Instead of making the words you want to emphasize all uppercase, try italicizing them instead.
- Your paragraphing makes everything confusing. You usually make a new paragraph when someone speaks, but since it's only one person speaking I'm not really sure how you'd correct it.

Now let's get started.

Spoiler! :

Way to set the mood. This really feels a bit drab and doesn't elicit any thoughts from me other than 'Oh, it's one of THOSE stories.'

I'd comment on the grammar of your dialogue, but I'm not very familiar with the rules of speech, so it wouldn't be fair to critique you on it. I can say, however, that it feels very unnatural.

The way you describe things in your speeches are also worded poorly. Like this part here:

Spoiler! :

That was confusing the first time I read it. Wouldn't it have sounded better if you'd written: At a glance, she seemed to be smiling and talking to herself, but she wasn't.
Granted, that sounds a bit awkward, too, but it's easier to understand.

Now this line here is a bit conflicting:

Spoiler! :

Just the paragraph before, you'd said she was smiling and talking with ghost, and now she hates it?
You also have other really awkward sentences in that paragraph, as well as a run on being the last line.

Spoiler! :

I'd I assume if she wanted to do something, she literally wanted to do it. Adding the word just sounds redundant.

Spoiler! :

This should be its own paragraph.

Other than that, it's just you descriptions you need to fix. The only thing that was frightening about that the way it was written. If you fixed all of your descriptions and made everything flow more smoothly, it would be twice as scary.

Anyway, you're a great writer, and I hope to see more from you.

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Fri Feb 01, 2013 7:13 pm

Caesar wrote a review...

Hey there dizzy! Welcome to YWS! I hope you’ll have a great time here.
Now, to the piece proper.
This was labeled under ‘short story > horror’. Usually, horror is scary. It evokes fear in your readers. But horror has been done so many times, over and over again, giving your readers a proper fright is so very hard nowadays. The one thing that, in my opinion, can still be quite scary if written well, is introspective/psychological horror, focusing very much on the character’s emotions and reactions. I recommend Poe’s work, if you haven’t already read some.
This on the other hand, is the complete opposite. It didn’t evoke anything at all in me, because the character that was narrating didn’t experience anything. In writing, readers want to see themselves reflected within the character(s). In good writing, the readers experience the character’s emotions. But, that’s kind of hard to do when there are no emotions to start with, if you see what I mean!

Regardless, there are other (less effective) ways of evoking fear, I’d say. Perhaps your surroundings. Now, let’s take a look at those, shall we?

A girl whispers one stormy, cold late winter night while she's sitting in her bed.

Well, that’s not a lot to go on. That doesn’t actually evoke anything in my mind, let alone fear. I would suggest a few things, but I’d end up suggesting so many I may take things in a completely opposite direction. You might want to think of temperature, and maybe describe the room in a way that gives it a ‘sinister’ appearance. Incidentally, ‘A’ shouldn’t be capitalized, it comes after a comma!
The same, concerning description, goes for your flashback ghost meeting. That should be the crux of the thing, the climax, perhaps. But it just flatlines.

That’s my main issue with this, really. It doesn’t evoke fright, at all. In any way. You need to present this completely differently. Also, the suspenseful end doesn’t actually strike me as a suspenseful end, but rather an unsuccessful ‘what comes after…?’ moment. It might to better as an introduction to a novel of sorts. Unless this is parody. In which case, a masterful job! But your grammar was good, at least.

Hope this helped
~Ita

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Fri Feb 01, 2013 3:26 pm

Charlie II wrote a review...

Heya dizzy,

This piece made me laugh such a lot the first time I read it. I like the twist on the normal scary story -- this time it's the person that's scaring (and indeed beating!) the ghost! It was a fresh glance at the horror genre and I really appreciate the effort you've made. There are, of course, a few things that might improve it in my mind.

First, despite the exciting nature of the story, the paragraphing itself doesn't really give the same feel. Perhaps you could break up the large blocks a little bit to let in some air. That will help the reader read it more quickly and thus impart an extra layer of excitement. You've done well with interspersing long sentences with short ones -- that has a similar effect and it's good to see that you've taken advantage of that.

An example:

"... Yes! That's right! She was going to get rid of that vile being once and for all! So guess what she did?"

Another pause.

"Right again! ..."

See how this increases the tension? The short sharp sentence in between the dialogue is much more exciting when it's free than when it's encased in text.

Next, about the twist itself. Perhaps you could hold back a bit in the first few paragraphs? Don't make it too obvious who the girl is reading to -- at first, I thought it might be me, the reader. That would make an even better twist when it's revealed, later in the piece, that the girl is actually reading to the ghost. So instead of giving the game away too soon ("There was a entity, a spirit in the room with her, and she'd known this 'ghost' for a long, long time.") maybe hold back and only reveal that later.

You also tell the story mostly through dialogue which is effective, but there might be room for a little more description. I like how you slip descriptive passages between the spoken lines -- this is really good form -- but perhaps there's space for a little more here and there? Maybe you could try it out and see if it feels like an improvement to you.

I think that's all the advice I have for now. Great work on a clever little story idea -- I enjoyed reading it. Take care and happy writing!

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Scary, Right? (18+)

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