Thank you very much for the review. Quite helpful. I read of a lot of Stephen King as well. I think I will take your advice on the breaking up of quotations in the dialogue. (In so much as you can call it dialogue..) I will work the redundancy in the beginning and try to clarify some things. Thank you again. You were a big help.
Horror / He Is Here Again (Analysis)
As I sit in my office chair the room begins to feel warm. The soft light that was cast by the candles on my desk fades. The shadows from the pictures on the wall cast long reaching for me. I begin to feel unsettled. Restless. Stirring slightly I feel an unnatural weight. I try to stand but find I am unable. Not as though I am bound but as though I am no longer able to lift myself. It feels as though my mass was suddenly tripled. I try again. Still I am unable. I feel myself sinking deeper into my seat. The pungent odor of its aged leather reaching up and grabbing my throat. The fear inside of me rises. The emotion is so familiar, almost comforting in a way. I have lived my life with it. I have allowed it to guide me to vices and virtues. I try to scream but I am stifled. Not as though I am being choked, but as though I am no longer able to control the muscles necessary to make the sound. Any sound. I cannot whisper. I do not, however, feel unheard.
An odd comfort still lingers. The fear remains the same not progressing towards panic. Why? I cannot move nor can I call for help. Yet somehow I feel protected. As though something terrible is about to happen but to someone else. I can feel the perspiration on my brow. The room is smothering. The walls begin to sway. Unnerving still I feel no panic. I begin to wonder…what is the cause of this? Am I sleeping? Perhaps a lucid dream? I try to awaken but remain trapped in my alertness. If not a dream then what?
I am alone here. No one but me has been here for years. My wife, my love, died nearly twenty five years ago during the birth of our son. Stolen from me. I cast my son out. He was a homosexual. I told him never to come to see me again. I couldn’t bear to look at him. I told him he stole my love from me. That it was his fault my love is gone. Now he is just like that man in the park when I was a boy. The one who stripped me of my innocence. Now in what may be my closing hours I long for my love….my child….anyone. I have been alone for so long I no longer feel the pang of a lonely night. There is only night. Only darkness.
I can’t breath now. I try to take deep breaths but can only take small gasps. Weak and wheezy like an asthmatic. Not enough. Panting. Struggling. I feel on fire now. The fear rises unstoppable now. I can’t smother it. It will rise up and take me to shock.
Then I see him. The choking subsides. The fire quails. He is saving me without moving. Tall and handsome. Somehow veiled though. He is unmistakably male, in his expensive suit and strong jaw line. Above the jaw, however, his face seems masked by some ethereal covering keeping me from seeing distinct features. Where there was no chair before now there is. He sits and stares at me. Choking almost gone now. The heat completely manageable. Did he cause the pain only to save me from it? Or was the pain caused by another?
I find myself drawn to him. No animosity, on the contrary a type of trust. Like the beggar on the street in the tattered fatigues. A hope of decency. I wonder about his reasons. Why bother me? I am already a self loathing recluse. What reason could he have to make me suffer? What must I have done? I longed for him to tell me. More than anything I needed his affirmation of my own self worth. He spoke to me. Voice smooth as a woman’s touch but with the same claws. Tearing me with his words. Eviscerated. Laid open. Bleeding.
I can’t understand his words. Incoherent babble. I pray he doesn’t stop. I feel a pain in the deepest recesses of my mind. The place you go when you realize nothing in this life matters. When you realize you are alone. Where I dwell. His words carry the same weight that holds me. They weigh down in my mind almost to comprehension. Tangible. I see them. I read them. Finally the mode of communication is clear. He speaks only to me.
Pride washes over me. This supremely sentient being graces me with his enlightenment. Still the unanswered question. Why? I try to shape my words into the same pattern as his. I come up wanting. He smiles gently. He replies. The words etch on the walls of my mind. You know. Do I? He has made a special trip for me. I notice something I didn’t before. I wonder if its been there all along. A simple hourglass. Delicate in its design. Flawless in its own fashion. Its grains near the end from top to bottom. What does it measure? My life? Is this construction exclusive to me? No. As flattering as the thought is I know it is incorrect. So what then does it measure? I try to ask him. Not for me then for what?
I try to speak. I want him to hear me. I need him to know me. I can’t . A constriction of the throat now. A threat? Blood from nothing. From nowhere. Now the panic comes. The questions pour. Why are you here? You know. What are you doing to me? Nothing. Why is this happening? YOU KNOW! Pain. Searing. Deeper. Smoldering from the inside. My blood runs like fire. Veins burst. Still I sit. Unmoving. Silent. What do you want from me? Everything but nothing. Duality.
Again this concept shows. I search for its meaning. Life and death? Foolish. Too simple. Beginning and ends. Pain is worse. He is punishing me. He forces me to search myself for the answer. A forced philosophy. I search the walls where his words remain scarred. A figment of my own reality. Nothing. He tears my mind open. I cry without a sound. I long for the answer. Not to ease my suffering but to make him happy. Thoughts race from my mind embodied it seems. Running as small children. Thoughts personified. I catch them to see each of their young faces twist conveying anguish unimaginable. Tiny screamers. I want to please him with the answer but I cause so much pain in the search. I continue. The expressions growing worse. I smell their flesh burning.
I look again and I am still in my chair. The illusions he brings are just that I realize. I ask him his name. The temperature lowers. The tightness of my neck eases. The weight lifts slightly. His words become a language I recognize but cannot understand. His veil becoming slightly less opaque. The dark hair. The long slender nose. His thin lips so soft and feminine. His reply on the wall now. Nearly legible. I try to stand. Still I cannot. I have only begun to realize what he seeks.
I realize the sand in the hourglass is nearing its completion. I know now that it measures his time not mine. As the heat again resides slightly and my torture becomes less I sense I know this man. I have seen him many times but not for years and never for long. The answer I seek is who this is. I must find who holds my heart still beating in his hand. Who cuts me and burns me but I still love.
He senses my emotions. He knows them. I feel rage from him. He knows I have found the question but not the answer. Pain again. At the fingertips. Burning. Itching. Tearing. I again try to scream. Nothing. Fire now. I have to stop it. I feel them crawling under my nails. Tiny bugs. A word on the wall. Regret. I understand instantly. My regret. My longing for love past and gone now. The bugs are biting me. Ripping me. I grab the nail of my left index finger. I pull. Nothing. I try again and I feel my nail begin to slide against my skin. A gooey movement like oysters down your throat. The accompanying pain washes over me but brings relief from the bugs. As though with the nail I am shedding the same regret that brings the bugs. I tear off each nail the same way. Tears now. No sound. He smiles again. I feel a want to hate but a lack of control. He commands me. How?
I retreat to my mind. I search for the answer. Memories come but twisted. My child’s birth but now my child is mangled. Handed to me in tattered rags. Attacked by something sinister. Clawed and chewed but living. His insides out but still moving. I run again. Turning the pages of my mind. Searching for serenity in my thoughts. My mother. Leaning for a kiss. I move to her for comfort but her mouth opens too soon revealing a mass of wriggling maggots. They fall from her mouth and writhe on the ground. Squealing. A high pitched sound bringing me to my knees. Too close to them. The smell. Sickening. As they writhe in their filth and juices. Mother keeps moving forward her eyes now open. But gone. Revealing the source of the maggots. I see into her head and see nothing but the disgusting creatures that lie wriggling on the floor.
Again I retreat. Deeper. Farther. Hiding. But found. I see my lover. My wife. I run to her. I long for her embrace almost as much as I long for his. As I reach her and wrap my arms around her she whispers to me. Deeper. I hold her and go. I am in the forest now. I know where I am. I want to run again. Don’t want to be here. Can’t. Trapped. Not here. Not again. I hear footsteps. I take her by the hand. I run. Closer. I know who it is. Not again. He can’t catch me this time. As I come to a grove he is there. Standing. Smiling.
The man from my youth. The man who stole my innocence. I beg for the demon. Plead for him to save me. He is nowhere. I look for an escape. The trees now too thick to allow me to pass. Forming a wall. How? Where I entered now gone. Only this. Only here. I turn and face him. The man who molded me in a moment. He steps forward. I turn to my lover. She smiles to me. I feel reassured. She steps back. Again. Again. And sits down. I try to ask her why. The band again tightens. I cannot speak. She looks at the man and smiles. He is on me. I will fight him this time. I am older. Stronger. No. Too old. Too frail.
He throws me down. Again he grabs me from behind. I see her sitting. Watching. Enraptured by the brutality. I feel his hands so rough run up my back. He tears off my shirt. He drags his hands down my bare stomach to my belt. I struggle. The weight. It holds me. Pants down now. I feel his breath. Faster now. Breathing heavy. Struggling for air. I try again. The weight. I try to retreat to my conscious now. Go back to the bugs and the pain and the fire. Anything but here. Trapped. He is naked now. I feel him come into me. Just as he did when I was a boy. Pain again. The blood. I weep without a sound. Cry without a tear. His continuous thrusts hurt progressively worse now. Dirty. Ashamed. I want to beg him to stop. His breathing is rapid and shallow now. Raspy. I hate him. He won’t even take it out of me to come. He ejects himself into me. Worse now. I beg for death. This is why I cast out my son. He became what this man is. How could I look at him?
She is still watching. My love. Rapt. Content. They come together to laugh at me. He walks over to her and helps her to her feet. I am still lying naked on the grass. My love. She is with him. Part of him. Or is he part of her. Immaterial. They are together. I know now I cannot stand against him. But her. I stand. Unencumbered for the first time it seems. I move quickly and grab her by the throat. He watches. Still nude. Still laughing. She looks at me. She tries to quail me with the maggots. She vomits them at me now. I will not be stopped. She swings at me but I will not stop now. She stops her struggles. She is not smiling now. I watch the life seep from her. I see it drain. I love it. She takes her hands and scratches herself. Cutting into herself. Deep and bloody. The words. Same as his. You know.
The demon is here now. His rage again. I feel it coursing through me. Back in my conscious the pain in my fingertips back now. I look at the bloody mess at the end of my fingers. I gag. The pain spreads across all my fingers now. I see the bugs moving beneath my skin. Crawling. I fear they will continue to move up my body if I don’t take action. I bring my hand to my mouth. I taste blood. It’s oddly refreshing. Rejuvenating.
I bite hard into my own flesh. Leathery. I bite and gnaw until I spit out a finger. Agony now. Utter anguish. The bugs. I move to the next finger. I must stop their progress. The demon smiles. It gives me hope. I pass out. How many fingers? Three, seven, maybe all of them. The pain binds and molds them all.
Gone now. I am drifting. I see water overhead however I am not swimming. The water seems to be hovering over me, as though I am encapsulated. I move awkward. Unsure. I move upwards? Direction doesn’t exist here. The water comes closer. I pass through it without getting wet. No moisture but the sweat still rolling off of me. Bright light. Then gone. Nothing now. Floating.
I am back in my chair. My hands a mess of blood and gore. I look at them turning them over again and again. The meat hanging now. Flopping haphazardly like the jaw of a dementia patient. Lifeless. I look at his face again. So familiar yet so aged. As though he were the adult version of a childhood companion. I tell him about the bugs. He chuckles. The purpose of his visit. I must find it before the time is out. I know I am nearing the answer. His words are becoming clearer. I can nearly place the face. I just want the pain to stop now.
My flesh bulges. I see the blisters forming on my hands. My fingerless hands. My flesh balloons out forming tiny constellations. I bring my hands together in a gesture of prayer and I feel them merge. Neither having the structural integrity to stand up to any kind of pressure. I try to pull them apart but they stretch out still connected. Still ballooning. More disgusting now than painful. I must find the answer. It won’t stop now. It continues all over my body. I feel my skin stretching tight. Like a latex glove pulled too tight. About to snap. As it spreads to my face I look one last time at the demon.
I now know. As I feel my lungs refusing to intake any air and my heartbeat weakening I know. It is my son. My banished son. Cold air rushing in. Lungs taking deep breaths. Finally. I have the answer.
A scream. I am sitting upright in my bed. I hear my doorbell. A dream? I drag myself out of bed. No weight now. I see my hands. Normal. Fingers and nails intact. I am whole again. I walk to my front door. I see a blue suit on the other side. I open the door and see the badge of a police officer. Copper. A symbol of corruption and authority at once. Duality. The concept again. Was it all a dream? He informs me my son is dead. I stumble back. My son. The demon? How? We recovered the body from the river this morning. It was badly burnt. We suspect a hate crime. Fire and water. What then? What was it that happened to me?
I can still feel the pain. The experience real in the way a ghost sighting is real. I walk into my kitchen and sit down at the table. The morning sun casting a yellow glow into the room. The soft ambiance seems out of place. I try to reason a why. It comes to me. My son. My banished son came to make me pay for damage done. Guiding my dream. Making me kill my love as I told him he did. I relived the rape. The only reason I cast him out. Why son? My fatherless son. I a sonless father. His tortured soul the only thing I have left. Too much pain.
I feel it all still. Hands complete yet on fire. Skin too tight. Phantom pains. No too real. Terrible now. What causes it? He isn’t here now. He is gone. Worse. I can see the fire on my hands now. Spreading. The heat licks up to my face. Singes me. I run to the bathroom. White. Clean. Yet full of filth. I turn on the bathtub. The water runs hot. Still no relief. The fire won’t extinguish. The water fills. I get in. The fire spreads across the surface now. I submerge myself below. Forcing myself to stay under. I need air now but the fire is too hot. It sucks the air out of me. No relief now above or below. I open my mouth and the water rushes in. Fills my lungs. My eyes close. His face there. Smiling.
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specjalista reviewed Version 3 -
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avedis reviewed Version 3 -
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An immensely strong story, and brought together with just about the perfect layers revealing.
However, as it stands now it does need a lot of work.
A simple thing to start off, that first sentence, is both missing a comma and weak – it is the bait to the reader and needs to be far stronger.
e.g. “I knew it was starting again when, sitting in my office chair, I felt the room begins to feel preternaturally warm.”
Grammar things are less important, however than the two major problems.
To me, this is the first ‘capture everything’ draft. For a final version, it needs to be drastically cut.
At first, the short sharp sentences rapidly firing one after another works really well. Then, it all becomes too staccato. A case of overusing a good mechanism. Mix and match a lot more.
Secondly, like the staccato sentences, the repetition and musing work to show us the mental state, but then just become ‘same old same old’. These need to be cut down drastically. Again, mix and match. Do some repetition, then quicken the pace for a while, then a bit more repetition. etc.
This is all ‘commentary. I know, but these issues are far more important than pointing out grammar to prove I read it all etc.
One last point, you tend to mix tenses a lot, e.g. “It feels as though my mass was suddenly tripled.” = “feels..is” or “felt…was”
Overall, a great start to a very good story.
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shamanfox reviewed Version 3 -
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The shadows from the pictures on the wall cast long reaching for me. (confused wording) maybe “cast long fingers reaching for me” or just a coma after “long” ?
Stirring slightly I feel (maybe leave the “feel” out, so its not overused.
I begin(or I am feeling) unsettled, restless, as I stirring slightly in an unnatural weight. The short sentences would make for an easier read if they were broken into their own single lines.
“I try again.
Still I am unable.”
If you could exchange some of the feels (instead of I feel myself…Sinking deeper into the seat as its pungent odor…) it would smooth out, and heighten the effect.
“feel unheard” I like the effect there, the comma give the right pause to the writers voice.
The second paragraph has the same idea in style. If you could somehow combine some of the sentences it would give less break and more lure to the emotional/physical roller coaster.
The subject seems to have a slip in an non rational state of mind when referring to the wife and son. It would be nice to really play on the way he is thinking. For example: The wife is stolen from him, and then his son by the the thief of homosexual lust…You could even use a visual metaphor, or urban slang such as Rectum Ranger to show the cynical nature of the main character. The crude wording will also fit into the “horror” theme.
I admire your use of strong vocabulary, every reader loves words.
woman’s touch but with the same claws. Awkward, maybe ”...touch and cold as her claws…” ?
“You know. Do I?” Might want to break this up into conversational lines?
Same with page 4 first paragraph. Breaking this up into separate lines will give the effect needed.
Concepts cannot be visualized. They are not themselves individual perceptions, but rather discursive and result from reason.
“Again this concept shows. I search…” The concept of some vague realization drifts through my mind as I search….
The metaphor of thoughts running like small children and you catching them seeing their faces and flesh burning. WOW! that was amazing! Very good use of imagination!!
Your imagination continues very vivid, I only suggest some more structure in writing.
I’m not trying to sound harsh, I read Stephen King and that kind of puts my mind set of horror based not only in the visuals, but also the cause and effect of HOW something is written.
You know you have a remarkable talent for visuals, and this story is remarkable. With a little change here and there in structure, I would vote this a 10.
BurnleyWriter reviewed Version 3 -
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Wow – a great read that really moves at a pace. Very graphic in places and I think the suggestion of rape by the ghost of the characters dead Son may put some fences in the way when it comes to trying to get this published.
Stunning piece of work though.
Burnleywriter
Mosaic_Creme reviewed Version 3 -
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This is a fascinating story. I like that you use topics that are considered taboo. Addressing homosexuality is usually rare enough, but to add in rape and banishment makes it even more so.
I don’t like the short descriptive sentences though. I see what you were going for with them, but I think it was overdone in this piece and ended up detracting from the story. All in all though, good job :)
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