A/N I know I have a ton of work to do but this was a class assignment we had four minutes to created a short story and this was what I came up with. Would love to hear thoughts and whether I should add on to this.
The smallest flicker in the abyss of the night showed the location of the enemy, idiot thinking he could light up without being found. Knox squeezed the trigger ever so lightly watching as the once flickering beacon of light ceased to exist. His eyes watched intently at the crumbling brick building, the ancient mortar crackling against the impact of the bullets finding their marks. It’s been almost three days since he laid on top of his own crackling building, waiting for the mistakes the enemy was sure to make.
The war started three years ago. In that period the cyborg drafts of1967 were created, most people in the nation had either one or more bionic parts to spare to be gunned down in this merciless war. What’s a loss of a cyborg after all there just machines, the voices echoing through his skull of the simple reason why he was sent to fight the people’s war. The war itself started because the people began to riot, first it was the minorities demanding better treatment, more civil rights. Then it turned to the bionic enhanced humans, the cyborgs. Demanding not to be treated like the cattle the government marked them to be. The sparks flew like that flicker of the end of a cigarette and the war began.
Knox listened to the eerie quiet of the land, the soft hum of crickets chirping their existence, and the ever so often shutter of the tall boys going off. The sky matched with smog’s of smoke from the explosions up a head. He knew it was a stupid thought, one he couldn’t stop as he lifted his head up to see if the enemy was still breathing, praying his bullet put him down like the mad dogs they were. His prayers fell on silence ears as bullets whizzed by his head.
Knox growled moving his cold hands to his mechanical eye, the model X the basic model for wounded soldiers on the western front. His good hand spun the edges of the copper rings to magnify the scope allowing him to see clearly. You could not ask him to tell you exactly how it worked but it did the job he thought.
He beamed as he saw the slightest rise and fall of the enemy; he squeezed the trigger and watched the spray of blood splatter the building edge with ebony trails. He watched as the corpse fell forward falling into the dark alley below.
I need to see the body. The strange thought took control like the jowls of a suffocating predator; he needed to see the face of the man he killed. Why is it so important to fight something that only purpose was to cause more chaos than what provoked the beast. The simple thought of why he did what he did became to obsess him, he needed to know why he was even fighting anymore. With the thought seared in, he began to retrieve the body, his hands moved cranking his metal leg into the right position, hand me downs his sergeant called it.
The 44-caliber rifle was placed back in its secure case and he was ready to go, his movements were quick and calculated as he came to the door looking at the bloody street that stood in his path. He knew the moment he took a step they would make him, and he would end up like the man, dead in the ditch. Knox chuckled softly now a better day to die anyway, with that he started to sprint. The sparks of bullets lapping at his feet and around his head exploded. The detached screams to shoot the bloody thing echoed through his pounding skull.
His feet leapt sending him rolling into the alley protected for the moment from the field of fire. The body laid toward his right near the tumble trash bins from the fall, his head facing the pavement. With rough hands, he rolled the body over and memories of his childhood raced before him. His memories led to him at the dinner table at home once again, the crickets lulling the world to sleep on the outside. When everything made god damn sense. He remembered the only light in the dark that continuously pulled him out of the abyss to rise again. The face he stared at would haunt him for eternity. His Sister.
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Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Heyo..."there just machines"... You meant *They're*... *hyperventilates*
The story really made me curious about the world they live in. You should definitely expand it, maybe giving more attention to the world!
Oh... What tall boys going off?
Fell on silent* ears, not silence...
But otherwise it was mainly good! o: Although it does have some issues! It's pretty cool that you wrote this in four minutes, but it seems a little short! :b The second half with the sudden change of mind feels a little forced... And the fact that it was his sister seemed so improbable that it was almost silly! ^o^ He was just shooting random peeps and checked one out the first time in forever and it was his sister... It might help if this was explained a little! Like maybe his sister worked at the factory or something =^-^=
But I really liked the idea! Cyborgs are always fun
Bye!
Yea thanks for the help, I have a lot of work to do. And I know I was having fun with the silly notion of someone screaming "Nooooo My Sisterrrrrrrr!" XD
Hi fallenoutofgrace! Imma call you Foog.
I'm a fan of short openings, as they can be really strong and easy to take in. Could you maybe split this into two sentences, starting a new one after "enemy"?
"Beacon" implies something big and flashy, but that contradicts with "the smallest flicker". Also, repetition here of "flicker" with the previous sentence.
"Ever so lightly" is a bit stiff; suggest just "lightly".
You don't "watch at" things - you look at them or you watch them.
Suggest "under" rather than "against".
This is the first mention of the building, and it came as a bit of a surprise because in my mind we were in dark space, not anywhere near a building. People often create their own impressions of a setting right from the very first sentence, so it's important to get in there right away and show us the setting.
Tense switch here - "it's" is present tense when the rest is in past.
Why did he have a crackling building of his own?
This sentence is a bit hard to follow. Suggest starting a new sentence after "were created", and rewording the bolded part as it doesn't make sense - they had parts to be gunned down?
Some spellings and punctuation here. Should be What's the loss of a cyborg? After all, they're just machines. The voices echoing through his skull reminded him of the simple reason why he was sent to fight the people's war. Remember, "they're" = they are.
This is a run-on sentence. Either start a new sentence, or change the bolded comma to a semi-colon.
This is a cool image, tying back to the scene, but I'm not sure it's the most appropriate. The end of a cigarette brings to mind a kind of sullen smoulder, not loads of sparks flying about and setting things ablaze.
This doesn't sound quite right. Suggest "and the staccato shutter" or "and the random shutter". Do you mean "shutter" or "stutter"?
Smog's = smogs
A head = ahead
"The sky matched with" doesn't make sense. Saying "the sky matched" would be the beginning of comparing the sky to something else. Do you mean that the sky was the same grey colour as the smoke?
Him = them?
Silence = silent.
Personally I'm not a fan of using second person like this. Saying "you could not" jars the reader out of the story because it's like asking the reader to comment on what's happening.
"Beamed" means a really bright happy smile - is that quite the right image for here? I'd have thought "grinned" would be more suitable or "smirked", as they sound tougher, meaner, and less innocent.
Suggest delete "falling" to avoid the repetition.
"Jowls" are the loose bits of skin under the mouth, like the drooly wobbly bits on a bulldog's face. Suggest "jaws" instead.
That = whose
I don't quite understand the last bit - what's the beast?
Became = began
Suggest reword: Bullet sparks exploded at his feet and around his head
Laid = lay
His = the
God damn = goddamn. This isn't quite the right word to use here; it's not got the right flow for profanity.
No capital.
--
So, cool twist ending!
Your writing was a little hard to follow in places, and some of your sentences didn't read quite right. If you read this out loud, you might be able to see how in places it was a bit hard to take it in properly.
You have some good descriptions - I like the repeated mentions of the crickets - but I'd like even more. This is quite a short piece, but it needs a lot of atmosphere. You're on the way there, but you can make this even more effective by really packing in the sensory description. Show us what Knox is smelling, feeling, the details of what he's seeing. Don't forget colours! I got a bit blurry at the beginning because it was hard to tell exactly where Knox was and what he was doing, so you could make that stronger by describing the scene more clearly. Is he lying on the grass, crouched in ruins, hiding behind rubble?
Knox himself was interesting - I really like the mention of his eye; it was a really nifty steampunky detail. But I didn't really understand his sudden compulsion to go look at the body. Why this body? What's so different and special about this body? He doesn't know who it is before he looks at it, so why is this body so different to all the others that he's killed? If this was his first kill, I'd understand, but it's not - so why does he make such a faff about this one?
The backstory about the cyborg war was a bit confusing. At first I thought Knox was a human fighting against the cyborgs, but then it turned that he has mechanical body parts, and it said that pretty much everyone had cyborg parts. Also it said how minorities had rebelled before the cyborgs, so does that mean that the cyborgs and the minorities are fighting together against the government?
But most importantly, why was Knox's sister fighting on the other side from her brother?
It's an interesting idea of minorities and cyborgs rebelling together - it reminded me a little of Robocop.
PM me if you have any questions.
-twit
Yea definitnly needed to re-do and edit. As the obsession I wanted to show him I would guess loosing it for a moment, he needed to know who he killed. I know it isn't something that normally happens but I thought it would give more insight than he packed everything up.
The war started three years ago. In that period the cyborg drafts of (<you missed a space) 1967 were created, most people in the nation had either one or more bionic parts to spare to be gunned down in this merciless war. What’s a loss of a cyborg(,) after all there just machines(. T)he voices echoing through his skull of the simple reason why he was sent to fight the people’s war. The war itself started because the people began to riot, first it was the minorities demanding better treatment, more civil rights. Then it turned to the bionic enhanced humans, the cyborgs. Demanding not to be treated like the cattle the government marked them to be. The sparks flew like that flicker of the end of a cigarette(,) and the war began.
Knox listened to the eerie quiet of the land, the soft hum of crickets chirping their existence, and the ever so often shutter of the tall boys going off. The sky matched with smogs(no ' ) of smoke from the explosions up a head. He knew it was a stupid thought, one he couldn't(fixed spelling) stop as he lifted his head up to see if the enemy was still breathing, praying his bullet put him down like the mad dogs they were. His prayers fell on silence ears as bullets whizzed by his head. (this sentience makes no sense to me, sorry)
Knox growled moving his cold hands to his mechanical eye, the model X the basic model for wounded soldiers on the western front. His good hand spun the edges of the copper rings to magnify the scope allowing him to see clearly. You could not ask him to tell you exactly how it worked(,) but it did the job(,) he thought.
He knew the moment he took a step they would make him, and he would end up like the man, dead in the ditch. Knox chuckled softly(,) now a better day to die anyway, with that he started to sprint. The sparks of bullets lapping at his feet and around his head exploded. The detached screams to shoot the bloody thing echoed through his pounding skull.
This is a really awesome story! I would love to see more!
-Panda-
Thanks for the help all get right on the fixes