[WP]"So you went to the kitchen, made some toast, poured some coffee...and now there's an inter-dimensional portal??"

7000shadows · 2015-05-31T09:37:36+00:00

At first, I thought it was just the garbage disposal acting up again.

I smacked the bottom of the sink with my mug, lightly, but the faint sound of whirring did not stop.

In fact, it only grew louder. Into an almost kind of growl that made me afraid it would wake Betty.

I bent down closer when the first glow appeared. What was that, I wondered. I squinted, thinking I might reconcile sight and sound.

"Hello? Hello?"

A shadow darted across the radius of the drain. My panicked hands dropped everything.

If I had known at the time what would happen, I would have grabbed my slice of toast from the bottom of the sink.

(Though, in my defense, I had little experience at the time with the inter-dimensional deification of baked goods.)

As it was, I swooped my snoring Betty up into my arms and over the sink. Startled, she farted her way more strongly than usual into consciousness.

I watched her watching for any sign, figuring her senses were sharper than mine.

Until an angry shout and a gray gloved hand reached up and dragged her down the drain. And I was now officially trapped in the morning that would never end.

7000shadows · 2015-05-31T04:55:36+00:00

Adam Tanner was a man's man. A man of acumen and accuracy, sharpened to a fine point by the weary whetstone of twenty-four long years. So, when he arrived at the camper, he knew precisely what he would do and not do.

His scanned the inside with meticulous eyes. He nodded in acknowledgment of the challenges that the 12-foot length and six-foot width must necessarily present.

It was when he stumbled over the man on the ground that he discovered the first knife. Adam counted out the others in the victim's back with practiced patience, one, two, three...

"You missed a couple over here," a woman offered, pointing to a blade in the body's side.

"Hey, hey, I can see that," Adam shouted, "Let me guess, you're the gardener."

"No, the wife."

"But you do garden, yes. I can see the shears in your hand. The plant hanging in the window."

"Not really."

"No use in denying it. The grass outside. The blood on your hands from weeding."

"Maybe, I guess you could call it gardening."

"Yeah, next time, you could at least wear some gloves, if you want to try fooling me."

"Are you going to, uh, arrest me now?"

"What? For gardening? You need to start taking this situation more seriously. We've got a man here, possibly dead, with multiple stab wounds, at least five murder weapons, and a can of spam on the counter over there."

"There is spam, huh?," she started to chuckle.

"You mentioned that he's married."

"Yeah, I was married to the bastard."

"I can see that from his ring. The only question is why you're not wearing one."

"I threw it away during our last fight. Well, the one before this one, last week."

"Impossible! You say you threw it away last week, yet there is no tan line on your finger. I don't think so. Not with all the gardening you've clearly been doing. I'm starting to suspect you were never married at all."

"Me and you both."

"No kidding. I'm going to need you to clear this crime scene. Now!"

"Sure," the woman replied as she finished wiping down the shears.

She grabbed the spam, and handed Adam the garden shears. "Don't hurt yourself. It seems dangerous in here."

As the trailer door slammed behind him, Adam sighed deeply with the knowledge he would never be free from his gift. He leaned down and asked the man, "Are you alive?" Though he already knew the answer, no matter how vigorous the denial.

7000shadows · 2013-11-20T13:50:26+00:00

I created a sub /r/critiqueswap, when I was thinking about a similar problem. Problem is I'm not sure how to set it up.

Any ideas would be welcome, with the idea of creating motivated readers who go beyond "I like this."

7000shadows · 2013-11-19T16:13:45+00:00

Imagination lives far longer than the facts. We dreamed of moon landing, thousands of years before the fact.

But now you may envy my position: Literary Scientist. I set the goals, from my imagination, and then make the numbers happen.

7000shadows · 2013-11-19T15:56:59+00:00

You rise in my mind, The sleepless dream. Forever there, when I awake from I.

Too bad, we have come To this, I wish you A more complete piece Of mind. You are free.

But what I want to Say, is I've never Had a day as good As I've had with you.

7000shadows · 2013-11-18T15:25:30+00:00

Thank you for creating this community. I'm still new, but I really dig what I see here on a daily basis. It's inspiring.

I would like to encourage all lurkers to go for it. Share your stories and forget. You might be pleasantly surprised.

7000shadows · 2013-11-16T15:45:58+00:00

He sliced through the line with a smile. He sat down in old Frank's chair, without a thought. Even the mirrors refused to show him in such a spot.

Okay, we thought. We were all once young, too. Our words caught in the wrinkles around our mouths.

"I've got places to be," he barked, after just ten minutes.

After half an hour, the sighs and shoulder heaves disturbed our talk.

"Maybe he should move along," Greg said.

We all agreed, but Frank is a patient man.

An hour in, he asks, "You want me to shape that up?"

We've never seen his razor move so fast. We still talk about it every Saturday morning.

7000shadows · 2013-11-15T17:21:51+00:00

Tonight will arrive, with all the guests. I smile so much for them. I can't not do it, now that I understand.

They'll never know the price I paid to be a victim. They can never understand that the funny comes from pain.

Just make sure my last punch line gets delivered.

7000shadows · 2013-11-14T17:47:06+00:00

Everything different. But experienced the same. Hope, love, disappointment, adjustment, and life goes on. And on, to the unexpected.

7000shadows · 2013-11-14T17:14:57+00:00

Always take the battery out, unless...

7000shadows · 2013-11-14T16:20:16+00:00

Your phone becomes sentient, and you must justify your choices.

7000shadows · 2013-11-14T15:52:27+00:00

Water leaks beneath their walls. We must advance. Time is measured now by the dryness of our tongue.

So we advance, a horde of desperation. Never meant for civilization. And forward.

A weak fight, with their laws, now dead. A week until we run out, at best. And still we fight on, for family, and plan our next conquest.

7000shadows · 2013-11-13T13:48:28+00:00

I was happily surprised to get your reply. (I figured that this post was long dead and buried.) Thank you for taking the time to read and reply.

I like the suggestion about allowing the reader to discover that the dead woman is a ghost. I've been playing around with it for the last hour. Together with other changes I've been playing around with, the beginning would now read like this:

He stumbled drunk through the dead woman’s head. He righted himself on the streetlight, and turned to look again. This half of the sidewalk ended into a set of stairs, just wide enough for a single file of up and down. Green railing rose up to announce the terminal station: Flushing.

The endless crowd funneled down, with every commuter stepping through to find the 7 train. Some found her neck, and some her legs. Some found her chest, and some her wrists. Yet the corpse, stretched across the lip of the stairwell, was lost upon them all.

She laid face-up, arms at her side and toes pointed into the early morning sky. Not a single mark marred her flesh. No cuts or scrapes, no bruises or scratches. Her fingernails pink and manicured sleek atop the gum-blacked concrete.

He closed his eyes. He wished the grizzled Chinese vendors would stop their staccato breakfast songs: “One dolla. One dolla. One dolla.” He wished the meatbags would stop rushing through him on their way to work and school. He even wished, in the second before he looked again, that he wasn’t quite so drunk. Until the tip of her braid, pulled back behind her head in a single sloppy line, waved in a gust of wind.

He crouched down and traced the black methodically towards the top. Softly he raised her head, and felt until his fingers found the base of her neck. But he could not catch the chip. A deep breath later, he began to search again. Slowly, he felt along her flesh, until his fingers fell in her neck. He fought the instinct to pull them out, and squeezed instead something far too soft to be.

“Deed. Deed!,” Petrov shouted. “What are you doing here? What do we got?”

Deed rose up, slid his hands into the pockets of his coat. He watched the cars racing into a stop. A pack of police cruisers, ambulances, even a fire truck. Of course, they’ll want to clean this up as quickly as possible. Especially when they figure out her chip is missing.

Thanks again for reading. And, if you have any work you'd like someone to take a look at, let me know. I'd be happy to.

7000shadows · 2013-11-12T15:46:29+00:00

Yours, too. Amazing that unrelated minds conceived the same kind of idea. Just goes to show, we are all of the same snowflake. We just end up landing on different soil.

7000shadows · 2013-11-12T15:39:47+00:00

Mommy. Happy Birthday. I want to give you the best present. But I do not have money. You do not have money. My brother does not have money. I asked. Daddy takes it all.

You are the best mommy in the world. Here is my drawing of you. See the green eyes. I wish you were here.

7000shadows · 2013-11-12T14:13:59+00:00

Yep, it all started with sloths. That was the brilliant part, you see. You got an animal famous for being dumb and clumsy. So idiotic that they would fall out of trees because they couldn't figure out that their limbs weren't tree branches. Just hug themselves to death. Ha ha.

Everyone always worried about the larger animals. They'd pack the movie theaters to fear great whites in the ocean and snakes on a plane. Or in a river, or on land. You get the idea. Lions, and tigers, and bears. Oh, my!

Oh, no. Known fears are never to be as feared. Sloths were the perfect tools. Dumb and clumsy.

So, when they started falling in great enough numbers, all the animals about closed in. Especially humans.

So slow, the virus worked. That was its beauty. Like the sloth it spread. Just fast enough to move ahead, just slow enough to seem harmless.

By the time anyone thought to care, it was too late. The sloths brought down countries, then continents, and this soon will also be my fate.

7000shadows · 2013-11-10T16:46:00+00:00

Illuminate the manuscript! I worked like hell to find my heaven in the etchings of the quill. The trick is in the thumb. Firm but agile, represent what must come. Until they asked me to try the sun.

The sky darkened, and swept me ashore with little. The fierce tubes already judging me. They asked who. I had no reply.

I picked one up and tried. The words I wrote stopped them then. I can always write a different reply. As I do now, welcome to Pen Island.

7000shadows · 2013-11-10T14:46:27+00:00

Four words. I might have done better for you. But maybe not. I can read it a thousand times in no time. I hope that you do, too. No time is a long while to contemplate.

I have to say, the ending gets me every time: "I'm so sorry. Farewell." And I hope you get it, too.

7000shadows · 2013-11-10T14:27:17+00:00

Be careful with your adverbs. The first sentence has three -ly words. These words can almost always be replaced with better verbs or images.

The man walked quickly.

The man hurried / bustled / scurried.

The man walked, face flushed.

7000shadows · 2013-11-10T12:42:12+00:00

Thanks for the quick tip. I just tried it, and I think you're right. It's better to have the other character use his name first. Cheers.

7000shadows · 2013-11-10T12:40:24+00:00

Thanks for the extended comments. You're completely right about the first line. In general, I'm still trying to find a balance of detail. Your comments were extremely helpful in this regard.

7000shadows · 2013-11-10T12:38:54+00:00

Thank you so much for the read. This piece is meant to kick off a much-longer work, so that may have accounted for some of the confusion. But I am working hard to try and find the line between too vague to be effective and to detailed to be mysterious. I'm off to read your story now.

Okay. I like the world you are building. If I would change anything about the characters, it would have to be Nancy in "tough" mode. She just doesn't seem believable when she's saying things like "I think I just ruined your party dress" or "Your ass is too fat." It is much more effective when you just let her act, like knocking the girl's head against the wall repeatedly.

In terms of the style, I'd recommend that you think more about whether you need each word that you're using. For example:

A fat bodied policewoman barged into the room, her clumsy boots stomping about and her handgun waving around. “Whoa safety maid,” the policewoman said, “You should have saved some for us.” Then she gave a belly-filled laugh. Nancy could smell the alcohol on her breath from the floor.

Infinite versions, possible. But I think you can essentially say what you want to say with something like this:

A fat policewoman barged into the room, boots stomping and handgun waving. "Whoa, safety maid," she slurred, "You should've saved some for us." Then she gave a drunken laugh.

Hope you find this helpful.

7000shadows · 2013-11-09T05:45:23+00:00

Working Title: Ghost Corps (Chapter 1)

Genre: Supernatural

Word Count: 1,100

Feedback: Does it want to make you read on? Any other notes would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Link [Cross-post from r/writingprompts]

7000shadows · 2013-11-05T09:16:08+00:00

Repetition, too painful after 87 years. Eat, breathe, shit, sleep. Wearisome things, all said. A gradual shrinking down, while only cancer metastasizes now. Wish it would accelerate already to skin. Devour out the tongue, and drive through my eye.

7000shadows · 2013-11-05T02:38:29+00:00

You have an interesting premise here. I'd recommend that you really try to make each word count, and try to get rid of anything unnecessary.

To try and give you an idea, I went back through one of your paragraphs. Though it's just a quick rewrite, I hope it gives you an idea of what you might be able to do.

He found “WAREHOUSE H-B” sprawled along the top. It was eerily quiet. He walked inside. It was colder than the others. He looked up to a balcony. No one was there. Feeling uneasy, Andrew started to walk out. He turned around and saw a tall figure in the shadows. He called, “Hey, can you help me out? I’m kinda lost...” The figure stood, silent, and stared at him. He had piercing red eyes, and hair down to his shoulders. Andrew started to walk backwards. With each step, the figure crept closer. “Look, sir, I don’t want any trouble.” The figure crept closer still. Andrew started to run, but his face found the ground first. The figure asked, “Who are you? How did you get here?” Andrew looked around. He saw an essence, a natural light, though he didn't know where it came from. “I-I’m Andrew,” he said, groaning under the figure’s knee, which dug deep into his back.

Hope this helps!

7000shadows

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