Cool. Love the last paragraph, the imagery is eerie but great.
Before that you did okay, but aside from some instances of awkward wording (i.e., "I figured it probably would have been pretty, once" would read better as "I figured it had probably been pretty once"), my main problem is that the writing isn't, well, exciting enough for what's going on. I mean, let's look at what we've got here:
An abandoned white-stucco house that people only approach on dares.
The narrator enters the house out of curiosity.
The house is creepy, in ruins, definitely not pretty.
DEAD GIRL!!!
The last paragraph, like I said, is just great, the imagery is so wonderful and it's a sudden hit - obviously the reader expects SOMETHING, since there's a creepy abandoned house and the narrator entered it, but we weren't exactly expecting THAT, especially not the specific imagery you gave us. So that's awesome.
What you need to do, though, is extend that to the rest of this. Your writing sounds sophisticated, which is fine, but it doesn't work that well for this kind of story. Which isn't to say that your narrator CAN'T be sophisticated - I mean, if she (she, right?) is sophisticated then she's sophisticated, and there's nothing wrong with that. But I feel like you pull out too many adverbs and abstract adjectives and nouns (i.e., "rambunctious," "inhospitality." By the way, did you know "inhospitality" isn't actually a word? I thought it was, but the computer is telling me it isn't!) Try to stick to concrete images, that'll be a big help. Yes, maybe you WANT to tell us that "the air was dense with inhospitality," but, come on: It's an abandoned house. Of COURSE it's going to feel inhospitable. ("Inhospitable" IS a word.) Maybe just show us, give us more examples - the air is cold, musty, mildewy. Mold is growing in the corners. You already told us that the lawn is overgrown, and in the following paragraph (I believe) you give us the image of the door with peeling paint. If you go with those sorts of specific images, we'll get a good sense that the house feels inhospitable, without you telling us that it's inhospitable. (As every writer is sick of hearing: Show, don't tell!)
Also, you can trim certain sentences. Example: "I doubt that I could ever forget what I'm about to tell you." Okay, let me say something. The narrator found a wax-covered CORPSE in the closet of a creepy old house. OF COURSE she's never going to forget that, so just doubting that she'd ever forget it isn't strong enough. Have conviction! "I'LL NEVER forget what I'm about to tell you" is much stronger than "I DOUBT that I COULD ever forget what I'm about to tell you." You know?
So, hopefully this helps, and let me know when you get more posted, I want to find out where the dead body came from!
~Blue
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Reviews: 1737
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