In your first two sentences, you use the word "now" twice, this is redundant as one use works to set the scene, and you could even omit both instances without the sentences losing any meaning, since you are using present-tense verb conjugation. I would consider each and every instance of the word "now" in your story and judge whether you really need it. Most times it is superfluous. I generally don't like the short, declarative sentences school of English lit, but since you're describing a de...

If his trigger finger was white from pressure, the gun would have fired, unless it's simply not loaded, in which case this should be mentioned. "but by the end both were raw and swollen so violent had she made it" this sentence was unclear to me, as I didn't understand: both of what? You write a very chilling tale or rape from the point of view of a sociopath. The comments about how the woman's eyes had seemed "almost dead" were effective at making the reader think that he had perhaps murdere...

Your first sentence is overly convoluted and doesn't quite make sense. If you parse its meaning, it says that "the impact was finding a way to change things about his body." But isn't the "impact of adolescence" the exact changes that you're talking about? So in that case the sentence really means, "The impact was finding a way to change the impact." I can see the idea that you're trying to get at, but the way you've written it is redundant. "A frail, small build..." multiple adjectives appli...

When you wrote that Dianne was trying not to talk, immediately after she'd been so dismissive of her test results, I chuckled. It was a great way to show the teenage dichotomy between attitude and speech. That Rod made a soup with the carrots was a great way to show his connection with his mother, and was also a neat little insight into the ESP angle of the chapter. I could go on, but you use so many nice little details that it would use a lot of credits to point them all out. Suffice to say,...

Your use of the "N" word was fairly shocking, and immediately got me into the "voice" of the piece. You need a comma here: "...a mystery for her, being she was..." But I would suggest, getting rid of the word "being" entirely and using a semi-colon to denote to clauses that are closely related, or a period to simply turn it into two sentences. I understand that you're writing dialect, but there should still be commas in the dialog where appropriate: "Auntie, listen, I feel you and no disrespe...

By "bad hand" do you mean his "off hand" IE: Joey had broken the fingers on his primary hand, so he was using the hand he didn't usually use, or did you mean the hand with the broken fingers... which would have been very painful to attempt, I think. I laughed at the idea of the paper saying "give me all your monkey" though, so it was a well-timed joke. The clerk has been using really good grammar up to this point, and some fairly erudite words (impromptu and imbibe come to mind) so when she s...

Although I think this statement is true, there's nothing witty or memorable about it that would include it in the wider lexicon of aphorisms.

My first problem with your poem is your use of overly-employed metaphors and phrases. Love poetry is extremely difficult to tackle in any significantly new way, because it is a topic that is so important to most individuals that it has basically all been covered before. The initial phrase "I love you more than" in particular is extremely common. "It's dangerous..." the "it's" you use here is a contraction of "it is" and should have an apostrophe. "Dying inside, searching..." you need a comma ...

In the first sentence, the phrase in the beginning "what rain" implies that there is a portion left over, so you don't need the words "the rest" in the second clause of the sentence. I realize that I'm jumping into the middle of this story, but the way the first paragraph is written it is unclear whether "her angel" refers to Lucifer whose wings are sheltering the woman, or to a third character and Lucifer is sheltering them both. I like the comment about how touching an angel's wings is an i...

Abuse me if I'm wrong, but does "several years devoted//to the cannonball advantage" mean that the subject of the poem is getting fatter as he or she ages? If so, that is a brilliant metaphor and a very good way to tie him or her into the observations of the young at play which follow. Does "heavy heels" refer to footwear or callous'? The phrase brings to mind heavy footwear (like boots) which would be inappropriate for water play, so by this I think you may mean callous', but for me the imag...