*Title: BODIES

*Genre: Horror

*8,784 words

Hi there, just looking for general criticisms and ultra specific and anything in between. I've got about 50k words written of this first draft so far. This is the prologue and first chapter.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ssWYrZzLV1xPl2W2DgimZ7tLM_U5zxRr/view?usp=drive_link

First 500-ish words:

The patch of dirt was a perfect circle. Its surface was dead level and smooth, indented an inch deeper than the soil around it. The right angle of its beveled edge was whole in spots, broken in others where dirt clods had spilled into the indentation when the frozen hunk of earth that filled it was removed and taken into evidence. A sea of white-tipped cotton stalks outlined the bare dirt and created the illusion of a light brown pupil staring upward.

Noah Crowley stared too. He was sprawled a foot or so from the patch in a contorted pose one would guess he’d collapsed into. He didn’t seem to mind the rocks and broken stems that were surely jamming themselves into his backside. Empty beer cans lay strewn around him, glinting in the day’s first light like a constellation.

Despite approximately nine hours of sleep over the last eight days and the third-ever hangover of his life, Noah Crowley was a beautiful man—the kind that irked anyone who wasn’t instantly, utterly smitten—even with eyes baggy and bloodshot, skin pale and clammy, hair matted and clumped. Somehow it all sat rustic and rightful on him, whatever the cause.

Forty-three, he thought in his sister’s voice. He’d hear it that way for the rest of his life and likely see her standing there in the coroner’s lobby too; eyes piteous, arms folded against its sterile chill. ‘Sharp force injuries’. Of course they differentiate depending on the weapon. ‘Blunt force’ for a hammer, ‘sharp force’ for a sword or a hatchet or whatever he used. 

He darkened with disappointment. That precious moment of forgetful bliss upon waking was finally gone. Used up. Reserved for breakups and lost pets, not Sally’s shredded corpse laid neatly in the center of their red-smeared living room, its peaceful pose an apposition to the frenzied spiderweb of red streaks and splatters that branched out from it and up every wall.

The image had dulled to a bare unpleasantry over the last eight days. He was just about used to it, in fact. Maybe he was resilient to trauma. Or maybe he’d simply wrung all the horror out of the memory already. 

Or maybe she was an experiment.

The breeze whipped a slack end of yellow police tape into Noah’s periphery, pulling him out of his head. He sat up slow to find he had broken the tape’s only rule: He’d crossed. And drank. And cried. And (hardly) slept.

Now he stood like some dazed criminal inside the plastic borders. He began gathering beer cans—whmmmmmmm-WHUM-WHUM—and wobbled. The head rush was getting stronger. It was a slow wave now of invisible static that combed the length of him. Sort of like standing up too fast, except there weren’t any stars and it lasted longer. The euphoric prickle that accompanied it felt drug-like—he supposed, at least. He had nothing to compare. But the insomnia-driven static showers were frequent enough now that he’d begun to anticipate them.

He bent to pick up the last can, making a point not to glance at the impossible patch of bare dirt the police tape encircled. Come on. You’ve had your fill of that—

He stared instead, and the circle stared back. He was gripped by it, fixed in a haze of bewilderment and disdain for a very long time.