hey there, i thought i'd drop by for a quick review.
i really enjoyed reading this story. it seems to be about a man who is sitting in the outskirts of a ball, tortured by the memories of his past that are brought back to him through the music.
your use of similes and metaphors is really effective in this piece. i think my favorite one is "They weaved in and out through each other like squirming bugs going about desperate business, a sea of bodies." not only does this simile paint a picture of what the ballroom looks like, but it also adds to the unsettling vibe that the man is feeling. the song he is listening to used to be a comfort for him, but now it's not. in fact, the song now sounds entirely different now that the circumstances for him have changed.
one thing i would say is the use of pronouns gets a little confusing in the second paragraph. i like what you were trying to do, keeping the names vague and mysterious. i think that can be super effective because sometimes the names aren't important and might distract from the point of the story. that being said, because both of the unnamed characters have the same prounouns, it was difficult, for me at least, to differentiate which character did what. i think that one solution that might work for this while still preserving the pronouns would be to italicise the other character, to give the reader a cue that this is a different person. For example, in the first sentence of the second paragraph, if you were to italicize the last word, 'him,' to differentiate the two characters. You did do this in one of your sentences: "...but he did not have the strength to put their oath, to put *him* in the past."
but overall, i think this story was really well written. the reader gets a sense of the loss the main character feels as he listens to a familiar song that is now out of tune without the company of his lover.
Points: 610
Reviews: 38
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