Aye, I thank you for the most in depth and constructive criticism on this story, My others have received such and I was expecting more on this one, as I feel it could use some improving. I plan on revising all my stories that I’ve recieved reviews on. I agree with your point about the wifes death, I have a plan on how to change it. Overall I deduce that it needs more of Sam’s feelings, so hopefully things will improve on the re-write.
Short Story / Shattered Mind
Sam sat in his desolate room, the walls screaming things into his mind, things that he wasn’t convinced he should know. Blood stained the far wall, remnants of Nick, who’s skull he had crushed earlier that month. He found it funny that he knew all along he would kill Nick, but he left him hang around as if it was some sort of test. Maybe I’m wrong for once, he had thought, but then the day came when he went to the hardware store to purchase that sledge hammer. When he got back to his apartment Nick was there, sitting at the single table in the kitchen on one of the two old chairs. He was reading some sort of tabloid about celebrities and how fascinating it is that they‘re normal people too.
When Nick noticed the sledge he asked “what do you need that for?”
Sam smiled faintly and said “I’m not sure yet.”
Nick laughed “Bullshit!” he said “You always know.”
Sam laughed at Nick, “Yeah, well hopefully I’m wrong this time.”
“How come you don’t do the tour anymore Sam? You know you could live in a place better than this.”
“ I can’t anymore Nick, you know that, it’s not the same, it’s not fun anymore. How am I supposed to act like I can help other people, when I couldn’t even protect my own family?”
Sam had thought of it before, picking up the old tour. The police investigations, the tabloids, talk shows, hell if he ever needed money he could just win the lottery, it wouldn’t be hard. Nick stood from his chair and said “What’s in the past is in the past, there was nothing you could do. There’s no reason to punish yourself man.”
“No Nick, you’re wrong I should have done more, I should have known sooner. I was spending too much time working.” The anger was apparent in Sam’s voice, not so much at Nick but more at himself. The self loathing he felt at that point, it made Sam want to go sit at the bottom of a swamp, surrounded by mud and shit. Living with primordial creatures too ugly to deserve the light of day.
Nick left after that, and so the sledge sat in the corner of the apartment, it seemed to scream at Sam whenever he glanced over at it. He could see himself doing it, a punch to the stomach to put Nick on the ground, and then down comes the hammer. He knew Nick meant well, but he was just one of those people, too cheery for their own good. That kind of happy go lucky person you just want to see fall down a flight of stairs and land in a big ole’ dog turd. It was about a week later, Sam had just come home from getting some groceries, tending to a black eye he had collected along the way. Nick comes jaunting through the front door, he’s whistling “Don’t Worry be Happy” and reading some insipid magazine about movie stars and their relationships. The second Sam heard that ridiculous tune his fists clenched. Another happy day in the life of Nick, completely content with his mediocre life, his tabloid addiction, completely oblivious to the world that was turning to shit around him. The thoughts boiled up through Sam’s brain, he’s as useless as the rest of them, he thought. Why is he still whistling??! In a quiet fury Sam stomped out from the bathroom and over to the corner. He heaved the sledge up onto his shoulder. Nick was sitting on that damn chair again, reading that stupid fucking tabloid, whistling that annoying song. The thoughts screamed through Sam’s mind louder, telling him he knew this would happen, his brain yelling at him “Told ya SO!”
Sam walked quickly and heavily over to Nick and kicked the chair out from under him. Nick fell to the ground and Sam stomped on his chest, he swung the hammer over his head and brought it down upon Nick’s face. His skull collapsed in on itself, it sounded like a smashing a clay pot that was filled with meat, Sam thought. He brought that hammer down again, shattering the remaining skull, tears rolling down Sam’s face. He brought it down once again on Nick’s chest, splintering ribs and puncturing Nick’s lungs. Sam stood over Nick’s twitching body, blood splattered all over him and his Kitchen, crying, crying like a child who breaks his favorite toy on purpose and regrets it immediately afterward. Sam went to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. He sat down, crying, he had become just like them, all those people that could do something great for the world. If only they could change the way they went about things. Sam left Nick’s body twitch, his bowels releasing in his body’s final operations. Sam got to cleaning up the bigger pieces of skull and brain, Nick’s eyeballs loosely connected to a small piece of gray matter. Sam cleaned up the shit, the blood, the hunks of flesh, the tiny pieces of cartilage. He was retching the entire time, he had never felt so sick before. Sam wrapped what was left of Nick in a trash bag filled with the tabloids Nick used to leave at the apartment, then lugged the body off to a land fill. Sam returned home and cleaned something like three or four more times. Looking back on it now Sam could still see the blood that stained the small kitchen walls, and floor as though it was fresh. Sam can’t remember how many times he’s tried to clean that wall since, and now it didn’t seem to matter, all he did was sit in the corner, in silence, left with only the loud yelling and screaming that consumed his mind.
Sam Thurman was a seemingly normal kid through out his child hood. He was popular all through out high school, he just seemed to always be in the right place at the right time. He always knew what to say to the ladies, he always had money from bets. He would make bets with his friends about things that were about to happen, even about stupid stuff like what color car was going to drive down the street next. Sam was always right, his friends chalked it up to just being lucky, little did they know that Sam had actually known what was going to happen all along. Sam always landed the hot chick in school, again friends just laughed and said “Sam Thurman, luckiest man alive.”
Truth was Sam was psychic, he never really knew why, it was just stuff that came to him. If he concentrated on it, he’d see it, he could read it, the future, other peoples thoughts. Sam could exploit it in high school, no one really gave it much thought. Now, Later in life, Sam had gone public with his abilities, and no one believed him, he was laughed at and ridiculed. Sam was a bit taken back by all of this as even he didn’t know the publics reaction world be so negative. However he wasn’t so shocked that he felt he needed to stop, cause really who would believe it. He just seemed like a normal guy, he didn’t have any strange scars, didn’t have gifted parents, he was just Sam Thurman. A regular dude from nowhere, USA. Just like anybody else. Never the less Sam continued with his predictions, and he was right every time, gradually people began to take notice of Sam. Sam’s popularity grew among the people as he was consistent with all of his predictions.
Sam even went so far as to predict his own wedding “In two years time” he said “I will marry the love of my life.”
This was a bold statement considering Sam hadn’t had a steady relationship in awhile. Since high school Sam was focused on making money, not getting laid after prom. It happened anyway though, in two years Sam was married to a woman by the name of Brittney Fredericks, the wedding was a national spectacle and tabloids were swamped in secret pictures of the event. After the wedding Sam was always good natured when he would go out, he would joke around with people who asked him for lottery numbers, and people who asked when they were going to get laid next. He even went so far as to pose for pictures for various magazines, random people on the sidewalk. He made television appearances, he’d could predict little things on TV things like the weather, he’d tell people where their lost pets were, things like that.
Sam was a national hero, a nice guy with a nice family, that just happened to know the future. He was just what the people wanted. He worked with the government and various police agencies in finding criminals, solving crimes, and promoting peace in general. Sometime a few years later Sam was as popular as ever, he was working on a particularly vicious police case, a serial rapist, they had already found four, possibly five children as victims. Sam having two kids of his own at this point, was very dedicated to the case. He stayed for late hours at the police precinct often times staying overnight. One such night he awoke to a horrible dream, his mind ached, the dream replaying over and over in his head, shouting the future into his brain. He jumped out of the small cot he slept on in the police station and whipped out his cell phone. He quickly went out and jumped in his car, he still had time, he had to. The sun was rising in the spring sky, early morning around 7:30, Sam would have realized had he not been in such a hurry. The phone produced nothing, no one answered at home, and Brittney wasn’t picking up her cell. His mind raced, the doubt clutching his brain, he had to have time, just a few minutes. As he got closer to his kid’s school he began to try and calm himself, there is always an alternative, he reasoned. He turned the final corner and started up the street as he got closer he noticed a crowd of people in the middle of an intersection. Sam drove up, stopped, and shot out of his car, he ran up to the scene only to see his wife’s face one last time as they zipped up the black plastic bag she was wrapped in, the kids had already been removed from the wreckage. A Truck had run the stop sign, two drunk kids who had been up for a bit too long, they barreled into Brittney’s car at something like eighty miles an hour. Everyone involved in the wreck died.
Sam holed himself up in the house, he left only for the funeral of his family. He stopped his work on the case, he couldn’t concentrate on much anymore, only his wife’s death. He no longer talked to anyone with the sole exception being Nick, his cousin. Sam never particularly liked Nick but found him to be bearable at times. Since he was family Sam allowed him in the house on occasion. Sam had no real job anymore, all his money was made from TV appearances and special cases. He sat in his house, getting food only through the proxy of Nick. A few of years of this recluse had run him dry, the house payment, the car, the funeral costs. Low on cash, Sam was forced to sell the house to get by. He rented an apartment in the city, a small sort of two room deal, a kitchen/living room, and a single bathroom/bedroom. It was nicer than some people had, but compared to what Sam could have, it showed that the man was broken completely.
The national reaction was negative, and Sam now faced a huge backlash. At first people could feel sorry for him, this man they all knew through tabloids. They might as well have grown up with the guy, been his friend the entire time, hung out with him on weekends. Now however, people felt he was being selfish by refusing to use his gift for the world. Sam followed much the same pattern at his apartment, he started to get out a bit more, only to buy food though. He hated leaving his apartment, the people now yelled questions at him and not to him.
“Hey what are the lottery numbers tonight?” Someone would shout at him as they passed.
Sam would try to ignore them but he could hear them think “Oh that’s right I guess you wouldn’t know now would you, if you knew so much why did your wife die?”
This would piss Sam off and he got into many fights on his ventures to get food. He was fed up with people, his thoughts had changed. He realized that even though he knew the future he could not change it. Aside from buying groceries, the only other time Sam had left the apartment was to buy the sledge hammer. Sam was tired of Nick, he was far to cheery and it Sickened Sam to even look at the fool. Nick had pleaded with Sam that he should go back to the way things used to be, Sam was steadfast in his belief.
“Why should I enlighten these ignorant bastards about what’s going to happen if they’re not going to change what they’re doing anyway.”
Nick had no response and Sam thought he had finally shut him up. The next day Nick came by again with the same argument, and they went through this day after day.
So here’s Sam sitting in his room lonely and full of hate, he’s sick of people yelling at him through his windows, he’s sick of knowing what’s going to happen. He hates the flow of thoughts that scream through his mind and he’s determined to get rid of them. Sam gets up from his position of staring at the stain of nicks head. He goes over to the bag that has been sitting on the table. He remembered tossing it there after that trip to get groceries the day he killed Nick. He pulled a pistol from the bag and a box of ammunition, he loaded the gun and returned to the corner of the room where he normally sat. As Sam sat there he stared at the blood on the wall, it seemed to flow like a scarlet stream, it seemed all too fresh, and he was sick of trying to clean it. He’s reduced now to a twisted murderer who hates the world, a farce, a false ray of hope in a bleak world. He just wants to be happy again, like he used to be, but it’s not fun anymore. He’s sick of his torment, his dead wife questioning him in his mind. She always asks “How come you didn‘t know? Why didn‘t you tell us?”
As he puts the gun to his head a faint grin crosses his face as he thinks of being rid of all of this.
Then the world went black, and suddenly Sam woke up in his bed back at the old house, his wife was laying next to him, he let out a sigh of relief and went back to sleep.
His body twitched in it’s dying moments, bowels releasing, that death rattle, everyone’s last words. They found Sam’s body the next day, no one had heard the shot in the night but everyone on the floor could smell its consequences. The police entered to find Sam sitting in the corner of the room, blood and skull painted the walls. They hauled him up and wrapped him in a big black bag, and through glassy eyes Sam smiled faintly up at the ceiling as they zipped the bag up over him.
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Cameron reviewed Version 2 -
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Ok… the first part of this story is good. Everything leading up to Sam killing Nick has this eerie schizophrenic feel to it. The characterizations such as they are in that section of the story are really good.
The main problem with this story lay in the rest of the story. You just end up giving us a bunch of back story that isn’t either a) neccessary or b) should or could be worked in earlier in the story so as to make it less of a large chunk of telling.
This also robs power from your ending, which I wasn’t thrilled about, but that’s just me. Honestly the story may be better served if it ended with Nick’s death, but had more build up to it.
Anyways that’s just my thought. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to ask.
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Drachana_Kestar reviewed Version 1 -
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SJFoss reviewed Version 1 -
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Cheersifyourepaying reviewed Version 1 -
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ElCocaine reviewed Version 1 -
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CrazyBeautiful reviewed Version 1 -
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Okay, it’s a pretty good story. A few things:
In the first paragraph, when you’re describing Nick’s death, you seem to really blurt it out, sentence by sentence, punch by punch. I’m not sure if this was on purpose or not, but I think it could have a much greater effect on people if you discussed the emotional toll that it took on Sam.
Also in that paragraph, I noticed that your dialogue needs some work.
Second, I understand the tragedy with Sam’s wife, and I really like that interesting twist to the story, but I think you need to change the circumstances of her death. Maybe he wasn’t home when she left to take the kids to school, and by the time he got there, he was too late? It just seems to me that if Sam’s wife knew his powers, she would listen to him when he told her not to leave, especially if he told her she was going to die.
I like the suicide, I thinl it’s the perfect ending to the story. I really like the sentence, “no one had heard the shot but everyone on the floor could smell its consequences.” Nice wording.
Overall, good job. Just a few minor things I would change.
Persephonewaits reviewed Version 1 -
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July 21, 2006
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Strong piece I like the writing the story the insanity of having what one may consider a “gift”.
I don’t see any flaws to speak of.
jezabel reviewed Version 1 -
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Sangs reviewed Version 1 -
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I fairly liked this for what it is. The sledge hammer killing is ill-defined. If you were going to do something with this I would suggest breaking it up into scenes. Just a suggestion.
Good luck with it.
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