Chapter 1-Bitten
Samuel awoke to the sound of his alarm clock beeping- six o clock. He staggered out of bed, eyes half closed and dragged himself downstairs grabbing his exam notes on the way down. All he seemed to have was exams. That was year 11 for you.
He opened the back door and let the dog out into the garden then stood there letting the cool morning breeze wake him up.
The sky was a rainbow of reds, oranges and yellows as the sun tipped over the horizon greeting the winter morning.
An electric green butterfly fluttered down onto Samuels crossed arms. Its big black spots staring up at him as it opened its wings, it had a slight metallic tinge to it. Samuel watched as it slowly crawled the length of his arm then stopped at his wrist. He cried out as pain accrued up his arm, the butterfly dropping dead. His wrist felt like was on fire, acid pulsing through his veins. And as sudden as it came it stopped leaving a numb echo of it behind. He looked at his arm, at the centre of the wrist a small puncture mark remained, sickly green veins pulsing. He poked at the bite mark-or at least he thought it was a bite mark, and wriggled his fingers, nothing. He shrugged and walked back in followed by the dog and got his breakfast and ready for school thinking nothing of it.
Samuel arrived at school and joined his friends waiting for school to open.
The Priory Academy LSST, apparently one of the best schools in Britain. Blue shirts tucked in, ties to the waist. Perfect uniform, perfect grades, perfect reputation and that’s how they liked it, “The Priory way” the called it.
At the moment the navy blue blazers where tightly hugging every one, keeping the cold at bay as they cached up with the gossip.
“What’s up with you?” asked a bushy brown haired girl called Elizabeth, freckles dancing around her nose.
“Oh nothing,” Samuel replied, tired blue eyes staring back at her piercing hazel eyes as she determined if it was the truth.
The staring contest was interrupted by a small girl called Eleanor; her three inch heals still making her the smallest. She hoped up next to Samuel on the low wall he was slumped on and promptly poked him grinning ear to ear until a boy with his fringe spiked up, came over and shoved her away and slapped Samuel on the back in greeting.
“Morning Jake,” Samuel said, blindly returning the greeting but missing completely, his eyes beginning to water, a grin slowly forming as Elizabeth made faces until Samuel burst out laughing and she cried out in triumph.
One by one, the friends arrived and they talked until school opened and they joined the flow of students spilling into the corridors and made their way to their separated form rooms.
Samuel and Elizabeth where in the same form and joined a bleach blond girl named Katherine at the front of the class room.
“Good morning,” Katherine smiled. “You all have a good weekend?”
“Yeah, it was ok I guess, apart from the revision and the pile of homework,” Elizabeth replied, taking a seat next to her.
“Mine was boring; parents took my iPod off me and made me revise for hours!” Samuel added, rubbing his aching wrist.
“Really, your parents are that strict? My parents don’t care two hoots, any way I was at Jacks most the weekend,”
“What were you doing at Jack’s?” Elizabeth smiled cheekily and winked at her.
Katharine blushed and turned to Samuel, “What’s up with your wrist?”
“Oh it’s nothing,” he lied. “Just a bug bite,” he grimaced as random spasms of pain ran up his arm.
Elizabeth was about to add something but the teacher walked in and the room went quite.
“Good morning, everyone, those with the English literature exam the seating plan is on the notice board; also there are no sports clubs on after school because of the shortage of staff. Can I please see all thoughts students who haven’t had their day book signed…”
Form was soon over, the first three periods went by just as fast and Samuels’s condition only got worse.
In no time at all it was lunch time and Samuel slowly shuffled down the year 11 gardens behind the pavilion.
He felt hot and light heated for such a cold refreshing day, the pain from his wrist had spread throughout his body leaving him stiff and exhausted.
Entering the gardens, he stumbled, his legs gave way and the world seemed to tip. Jake appeared at his side catching him before he dropped and guided him over to one of the benches under the shelters they were sat at.
“You ok mate?” Jake asked. Every one looking at him with concern, he looked pale and sickly.
“I’ll be fine,” he mumbled and accepted a drink from Eleanor. Looking up from his drink he attempted a smile. Satisfied for the moment his friends continued their conversations.
“You ready for the English exam?” asked a brown haired, shy looking girl named Harriet.
“Tomorrow right..?” Elizabeth replied.
“Thought it was Wednesday!” exclaimed a lanky boy called Joseph, Jo to his friends.
“Nope, definitely tomorrow,” Elizabeth said firmly, checking her exam timetable then glazing over a Samuel checking if he was ok.
He was slumped pale faced staring down at the ground oblivious to his surroundings, his left wrist slowly cramping up. Suddenly feeling nauseous he staggered to his feet holding on the wooden pole of the shelter. He keeled over, his vision unfocused he felt as if he was being ripped from his body and blacked out. But what he didn’t know was that was exactly what was happening.
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,779 Reviews
Salutations. The story was kind of intriguing, but there were a lot of small grammatical mistakes. I'll try to find them all:
One grammatical error that seems to occur a lot throughout the piece is a lack of commas, specifically in a situation such as
"He walked over to the table setting down his book."
Here, there should be a comma after "table". This also applies in any "[Person does this],[doing this]" where you have a past simple tense verb phrase and then a past progressive verb phrase. This applies with any form of these as well, whether switched around, worded differently, etc.
Another thing that I noticed a lot were comma splices, where two independent clauses are put together in a sentence with only a comma for separation. Here's a good article about them.
So, my first impressions are that the bug bite is interesting, and it brings a lot of excitement into the story early. The character, however, doesn't seem very interesting. Add some uniqueness to him to allow the reader to connect and care about him.
Anyway, good job, and good luck with the rest of the novel!
Well Deadman here with a review for you. I'd like to start of with the good stuff. I very much enjoyed the piece and the plot. Your word choices where absolutely excellent. It is overall a very well written piece, and my mediocre reviewing brain could only pick up on a couple of mistakes or iffy areas that confused me.
First of in you wrote a sentence here and it looked like this,
"Can I please see all thoughts students who haven’t had their day book signed…"
I have no idea what you where trying to say here. I think you can fix this up pretty easily with a simple word change. Maybe try making it this "Can I please see all of the students who haven’t had their day book signed…" See a simple couple of words and I think it sounds better, but it's your story do with it as you wish.
Next is another little nitpick you have another sentence here that probably flowed well at first but when I read it a second time I felt that it was a little awkward. It's this one right here,
------>"Suddenly feeling nauseous he staggered to his feet holding on the wooden pole of the shelter"
Seems pretty well written, but I feel as though it should have said, "Suddenly feeling nauseous he staggered to his feet holding onto the wooden pole of the shelter" Let's play a game did you find the change? It's okay if you didn't it's such a small change. "holding on the wooden pole" does sound right, but in my personal opinion "holding onto the wooden pole" sounds a teensy bit better.
Like I said overall it's a good story, and I just had a couple of nitpicks that aren't too serious. It's your story change it how you want to. I can only give you advice (bad advice at that lol) to help you with your writing. I hope to see more works from you in the future.
XD
Deadman
Hi! sammydavy..
chancesnchanges here.. =)
I want to say that I like the words you used in describing, especially in the view. It made me picture the place his looking at. Then, in the last paragraph it makes me think on "Why is he going through that?" Also, the title of your piece is nice. Welcome to YWS. =D
Keep going,..
ll
U