thank you for reading my works at all!! I apdated a new version, version five if you wanna take a look.
Short Story / Prologue-Ashay
Prologue
A cold wind blew across the field, stirring the ashes and embers. The only sound was the crashing of the sea below. The remains of a family home lay charred and black amongst ashes from flames that had swallowed it only minutes before. The clouds were an ominous black and rain began to pour on the remains of the house, the embers that were still burning hissed as they were put out. The rain continued to pour down turning the ashes to sludge and causing the roof to collapse. Which had been the only part of the house left standing after the fire. The roof fell with a wet ‘sloop’ as thunder crashed in the background and the sky darkened. As the last remnants of the house fell the the valley was suddenly lit up by a flash of lightning, illuminating in its eerie glow a skeletal hand that had come up from the muck. Another flash and an arm was free from the slop and pulled the rest of the corpse out of its watery grave. It was covered in burnt and peeling skin, that hung from its bones. The skeleton stood shakily, and slowly turned towards the eastern shore. Once turned fully, the horrible creature slowly limped towards the lake, pieces of its charred flesh fell to the ground, more of the skeletal remains revealed as it walked.
Having reached the shore, the skull tilted and faced upwards into the blackened sky and the rain suddenly stopped and the clouds cleared to reveal a blood red moon.
The glow of the moon flowed over the skeleton and intensified as the clouds covered the moon again.
When the glow subsided, an ethereal beauty stood on the edge of the lake, a black cloak covered her body. Blood red lips contrasted with the alabaster skin of her face.
A pale hand came from of the left sleeve of her cloak and pushed back the hood of her cloak, revealing her pale face and closed eyes. She smiled. Her eyes opened revealing sparkling emeralds. She looked up at the now pale moon. The eyes closed again reopened a moment later, and slowly draining the world of all its warmth. An icy wind passed, and sends a chill into all creatures. She looked down and bent to move aside some of the rubble. She sneered at no one in particular as she worked, before she spoke.
“What shall we do about them, they die so quickly and yet,” she looked down at the girl,”They still continue to populate this world like a vermin. Never dying, but never living either.” She held up her hands , dripping with still-warm blood. She looked back to the sky, licked her hands clean, closed her eyes and purred contently at the taste of the innocent blood, freshly spilled. She lifted her blood covered face to the sky as she turned and walked away from the cliff’s edge, speaking in a low conspiratorial tone.
“What shall ‘we’ do with them, what shall we do?” she whispered to herself, her beautiful eyes sparkled in the dark.
“Disgusting creatures, humans. Hypocritical…. in denial of their …faults …to the end.” She said, her voice cold enough to send chills down the spine. She grunted as she removed a large piece of foundation and she stood, holding something in her arms. she held up the still breathing body of a young child, whose eyes shone with fear and confusion, body covered in abrasions and burns. She cradled the child in her arms and held the child’s head to her chest, stroking its brow and staring down at it with her cold eyes. The child looks up at her in fear and gasps as the woman suddenly snarls and crushes the small, childlike skull between her hands, and smiles at the satisfying crack of breaking bone.
Dropping the still twitching corpse to the ground, she stared at it for moment, before she rose to her feet and turned towards the edge of the cliff and stared out into the sea. Her black robe whipped around her blooded ankles and feet and golden hair was blown across her pale face as the wind blew around her.
She frowned and cocked her head to the side still looking at the sea, a mad gleam reaching her eyes.
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MLSolari reviewed Version 5 -
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So. Very. Cliché.
Just as a personal pet peeve, if I see one more cruel ice queen with blood red lips and alabaster skin, I’m going to scream.
But that aside, you had very good imagery for what you have here, however, on that point, I don’t know what is there. There’s a house, a dead guy, a dead kid, and a mean woman. How does this lead to anything?
The point of a prologue is to set up events in the past that make the first chapter of a novel make more sense. What you have now has no substance, it doesn’t offer any facts, it doesn’t start any sort of ground work.
I would suggest expanding this, adding more core details as to why the house burned, perhaps, who the skeleton is, why its there, and what the purpose of this nasty lady is or even what time frame all of this is in.
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FrakKevin reviewed Version 5 -
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Okay at first I was confused, but realized the skeleton transformed into this woman. I love that she killed a kid…that was ‘hardcore’. I like that you pointed out what shall ‘we’ do, because some people would take that as a typo. Over most of the story wont begin until part 2, but this part was decent enough in an attemp..to capture the reader.
Bartleby reviewed Version 5 -
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This is good. This is creepy. This is blood drinking creepy, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just taking me a second to get over the fact she killed a baby and drank it’s blood.
Ah! I’m over it.
Your descriptions are nice. This isn’t my style, so I’m not nuts about it, automatically, however, I’m sure this is very good.
Hm, my thought is to maybe be different, and start off with the description of the woman/creature, instead of a description of the landscape. People ALWAYS start off with the landscape. I don’t really know why. You don’t have to jump into the action right away.But honestly, landscape is always first, never all that interesting, and doesn’t grab the reader. It makes me yawn. Your descriptions were very nice, but I would have really gotten interested at the beginning if the first sentence was describing some creepy person-like thing that liked to eat babies. Now, that’s finger-lickin’ good.
Hm, sorry.
Anyway, spice it up. Don’t eat babies. Good work.
Gabrielle reviewed Version 5 -
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The roof fell with a wet ‘sloop’ …(You don’t have to say the roof fell again. You said it in the earlier sentence.)
Where did the lake and girl come from and did the burned skeleton turn into the beautiful woman?
Try and clear up some details.
I really enjoyed reading it but I kept asking myself where did this come from and what happened here.
In the end, it was very good.
riotinto3 reviewed Version 5 -
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well…the imagery is good, very intense even, but the thing that jumps out at me right from the start is the “telling”...is there a way that you could let all that wonderful imagery unfold bit by bit, through action and let the character’s action reveal what’s going on in the piece? I think you can. It’s the old rule of less telling, more showing….
“In the sky the clouds were an ominous black and rain began to pour on the remains of the house, the embers that were still burning hissed as they were put out. “
I’m not going to preach here, but a more active description usually works better than a passive one:
A slow heavy rain began to fall from ominous black clouds gathering above, the cold droplets hissing silent against the hot smoldering embers. ....that’s only my opinion and it’s your story…and it’s a good one…keep writing….
57htz reviewed Version 4 -
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This piece is very choppy and needs heavy revision. It is very hard to follow what exactly is going on here as well. The final section jumps around between present and past tense. The opening section is a little redundant and has serious flow issues.
lynsey reviewed Version 4 -
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First of all, I’ll apologise for reading your prologue after your first chapter. I thought you had a better beginning in the prologue but again some of the language is a bit repetitive e.g. remains and remanants, the rain, the roof, pale.
Try and stay away from cliches such as alabaster skin and blood red lips, and a chill down the spine.
Also,you might want to add in other sensory images such as sounds and smells.
darkdescent reviewed Version 4 -
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This is a good start. Very good descriptions and imagery. There are a couple of small issues.
“Which had been the only part of the house left standing after the fire.” Sometimes sentence fragments work, but I don’t think this one does.
Also, the description of the child being killed is in present tense, while the rest of the story is past tense. This doesn’t make sense and disrupts the flow.
Otherwise, very nicely done. I look forward to reading more from you.
raindragon16 reviewed Version 4 -
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This is one of the creepiest writing that I have ever read to myself. I can’t believe how much creativity can be found in just a prologue. I love it how you can transform a scene of horror into something almost beautiful in contrast.
I know this is a Dragon Ball Z plot, but this is what DBZ should have been after all the years of conflict and turmoil that the original characters endured to save a foreign planet.
I already want to see more of this story sis, sorry that I didn’t read your rough drafts.
solarflare reviewed Version 4 -
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A good read with what you have so far. The woman is very mysterious and has me wondering what exactly she is. She isn’t I’m sure human as she starts out as just a skeleton but gets her flesh back somehow from the moon. This is an interesting part. Also she seems pretty morbid to me. Crushing the babies head and then licking the blood. Definently not human.
There were a few mistakes that you should have a look at.
“and slowly draining the world of all its warmth” – I think draining should be drained, unless you put in ‘started’ which would make sense to.
“An icy wind passed, and sends a chill into all creatures” – You can do one of two things here. Either change passed to passes or sends to sent. If you read it to yourself one of those should make it sound better.
That is all I can see right now. Besides those the story was pretty good. Keep writing and see where it takes you.
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