You have started to paint a picture of a very ruthless woman here. You did so effectively.
You also set the scene at the dock to be realistic.
What threw me is the last paragraph. It was quite a jolt. There was no mention of Theresa or the baby - or for that matter why or whether Andino had a reason to live beyond the normal self-preservation that everyone has.
I think you have a good thing going here - maybe is just isn't appropriate for Flash fiction - just needs a longer treatment.
You painted a clear view of this world and the beings that populated it.
The one thing that confused me a little was that I didn't see how these 'soul catchers' caused the carnage spoken about at the end. It seemed more like they were taking advantage of the carnage that existed.
This is a great scene. Not sure the phrase "Who the hell" is quite appropriate for the age group that still believes in Tooth Fairies, but for anyone who is old enough not to, the whole sentiment of this tale rings true - at least it did for me.
This may be a good opening to a chapter or a short story (either one). However, there wasn't much substance to this as it stands. I can see a little bit of tension building, but I'm just not sure where it is going.
Just a heads up - this phrase: "it's to risky." - the word should be too. It's the sort of thing that's hard to catch in one's own writing. We've all done it.
I think I would have given this another half star except for the formatting. A couple of things make it look amateurish. You need to do an extra 'Enter" after each paragraph to add some white space for the reader - and also, indentation is very rarely used any more, but when it is, it needs to be consistent - I see two, three, and more spaces starting paragraphs.
That said, though, you do have a way with words and building character. I hope you get to revisit this and expand on it. These few short paragraphs would entice me to keep on reading to find out more.
This is a great story. Had this been a full fledged book, I would have kept right on reading.
It just goes to show you there always has been and always will be - the right way, the wrong way, and the military way of doing things! (That goes doubly for the concept of time, too, and don't get me started on comparing to a hospital's concept of this.) You've showed that very well here.
I think you've done a good job of setting up the tension between Monday and Johnson. It should lead to some very interesting conflict later in the book.
I don't have too much in the way of constructive criticism to offer you. I might mention that all the naming convention could get a little confusing. Perhaps following circumstances will make things clearer.
The only thing that puzzled me a little bit was the four or five paragraphs of conversation just before the nap time. I'm not really sure what that was doing in this story. It didn't really detract from the story, but it also didn't really add anything to the story.
I do like the way Stoian didn't quite "get" that he saved the day at the end. It made his character just so much more precious.
I think your word count constraints is the real villain here. There were some things/transitions that bothered me a little bit.
Early in the story, Erin was disarmed a little too easily. Even though you were still developing the character, and at that point I didn't know that she belonged to the 'dark side,' it just didn't ring true. Also, in that part of the story, she did seem to acquiesce to Trace's demands a little too quickly.
By the time they cleared the alley, I was beginning to wonder which side she was on, so that is very good foreshadowing on your part.
But, when they got to the hospital, I didn't get a sense of the space or the people there. I didn't get a sense of why the "doc" was even in the story.
And, I guess the last thing that bothered me, was when she was holding a gun that was missing the clip and she acted surprised? It's a pretty noticeable difference in the weight of the weapon.
You are a good writer, I hope you have a chance to flesh this piece out a bit.
It took me a while to get used to the cadence used in this story - it's like reading one of the old classics. That was fun, though.
There were a couple of spots where a preposition was missing, but other than that, I could find nothing wrong with this story, nor be able to offer suggestions for improvement.
I'm not sure, but the only thing that may have been a distraction was the amount of describing Jinn's 'thrill' of the risks she was taking. It did seem to go on-and-on.
I like the way you showed the slow dawning realization of the consequences of her addiction meant, so maybe that amount of description part wasn't too far off.
I think you're doing a good job of starting to build your characters. Both the Snake Pit Man and Grits are coming along nicely.
There are a couple of things that I will mention. In this portion - "And even Zombies didn’t make your teeth fall out. Unless they bit half your face off with it." - I found to be confusing. First I thought your face off with it - what's it? Then I reread the two sentences and figured out 'it' was a tooth. But...in the first sentence the teeth were falling out; in the second they were being bit off. I'm not sure you want the reader to have to solve a puzzle at this point so you may want to revisit it.
And here - "the fall of autumn as /he/ called it." - did you mean to use single quotation marks, i.e. 'he' or something else? Not sure what the backslashes would mean otherwise.
Finally for the aesthetics - an extra "enter" after each paragraph for the text that follows the first four paragraphs is really needed. It would make your work look more serious and professional.
I should also note that you painted some very amusing pictures in this piece. I especially liked this one: "You don’t survive being a narcoleptic in this world without being one tough little bugger yourself." It's very close to a Yogi Berra-ism! Fun stuff.
I like the way you showed some very intense tension between two siblings.
Also, how you showed that both twins had a good and bad side to them, how they were more alike than different. It was very subtle, but I think that makes it more effective.
A couple of nit-picky things. There was one spot where a preposition was "off." I couldn't find it just now, so you may want to read your story out loud to catch it. The other thing is the very last sentence “Crystal”. - it should be "Crystal." Quotation marks almost always go outside.
You may want to look at this part a little - "Camille Dante arrived earlier and waited patiently in Brittany’s office." - and the next paragraph begins - "She sat on the sofa in Brittany’s office."
The phrase "in Brittany's office" is used twice very close together. It's a little distracting. You may want to rework it a little bit.
You did a very good job with your prompt. Keep up the good work.
There is only one phrase that I picked up on: "senior intelligence head stated." It made me back up and read it twice - it's not really a redundancy, just awkward. Maybe it should be 'head of Senior Intelligence;' if Senior Intelligence is a division of the agency, then those two words need to be capitalized to make sense.
Other than that, I really enjoyed this story and admire the fact that you could tell such a complete one in so few words.
You are doing a good job in rewriting this. The story is shaping up nicely. I don't really have a lot of overall suggestions for you, but I have come up with a few specific ones.
There are some things that you might want to look at again. The first is the spacing. You need to do another 'Enter' after most of the paragraphs. I do believe I would have given this another 1/2 star if it had been easier to read through.
Another point is that you had two characters using the word 'firstly.' I've heard people say this, usually when they are trying to sound authoritative without being too sure of themselves or mean something like 'this should be obvious to everyone;' but most people don't use it at all. It sounded like something the boss would say, but it did not ring true with the candy-striper - she would have merely said 'first.'
In this sentence - "Well Mr Taylor, tales of your demise has been exaggerated." - it is 'have been.'
And, in this sentence - "and I like usual, had to clean up his mess." - it almost didn't make sense. Just replacing the word 'like' with 'as' would help, but maybe you'd rather restate it altogether.
Finally, you should run spell-check. There were a couple of words that just had keying errors.
As I said, these are pretty small suggestions, but I hope they help.
Of course I did figure out the persona behind the girl (Debbie) about the time she talked about the roach, so the ending wasn't so much of a surprise to me.
Probably what was needed was to develop the Truman character a little more. If he was truly on the run from his original identity, he probably would have not been so quick to identify himself and his contribution to this work.
I kind of see this as a scene that could be messaged and expanded into a much larger work. It definitely has potential on that score.
The meter or cadence was a little off in the last line of the third verse and the last verse, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but 'whatever' would read just as well as 'what.' Just a thought - you could probably come up with something better.
Maybe use some punctuation in the last verse and cut out a couple of words to make this flow. Not sure.
That said, this is a very tight poem. Concise and to the point. You may not have to revise it much at all.
It has been a few years since I've watched "The Next Generation," but I recognized every one of these characters in your piece. You kept very true to the format of the series, which probably helped in this recognition.
There are some things you could to to improve this piece, though.
One thing is that, while it is not unheard of for an enlisted soldier to be made an officer during war times, to go to a Brigadier General in a few short months is pretty over-the-top of reality. You might want to check out the Army's website to see if you can find a listing of ranks and move your character up through them instead of one big leap. This is a fantastical piece, but it should probably be tied a little bit to reality.
Another thing you should look out for is that I noticed several paragraphs where three or more sentences started out the same way. You might want to look at those and rework them for a little variety. There were also a few paragraphs that started out the same way. It gets a little sing-songy otherwise.
This might not be your fault, but rather the fault of your spell check or a result of doing a cut-and-paste into the WDC site, but there were several words that either had one too many letters or not enough letters. An example would be "the vs. they" and "they vs. the." Another would be "why" when you meant "we." To use these as a way to indicate the back-country or country-boy nature of the character might be appropriate to see a little bit in dialog, but you probably need to fix them in the prose portion of this piece.
And finally, Some of those very long paragraphs should probably be broken up into two or more paragraphs. On the same theme, you probably should do an extra "Enter" after each paragraph so there is more white space to make it more readable. It never hurts to please the readers.
This is all rewrite and after the piece is finished type of stuff, so I would suggest you finish it and then go back and take a look at these things after you've had a chance to put a little distance from it (a week or two) so that your eyes are fresh when reading through it again.
Keep on writing, this piece has a lot of potential.
Of course now you could go on to speculate on all the different types of love one can experience and what they mean: brotherly/sisterly love, love of mankind, unrequited love etc. You could probably come up with about a dozen or more different types of love to define.
I guess the only thing that confused me somewhat was at the end. Is Arthur her Granddad? This piece contains quite a few characters for a short story and I was wondering if you were introducing yet another one at the end.
Maybe one more thing struck me as a little odd - the story mentioned that the shoes must fit both feet. I'm not sure how that fits in.
It's a good story, though, so keep up the good work.
There aren't many suggestions for you, but I have to admit that I had to read the first paragraph three times. I kept asking myself about just how many characters are being described here. It mentions a companion in the first sentence so I thought there could be more than one person, but each would usually have its own paragraph. Finally figured out that the companion was an insect later in the story. You may want to revisit this.
There were a couple of prepositions missing - it didn't distract too much, just thought you might want to add them.
This is a pretty good story. There are probably some things you could do to tighten it up. I hope some of my comments will be helpful for you.
There is much about this I like. I think eventually you did start to build an alternative world for your characters, although it started out a little sketchy. I had to read quite far into the story before I even figured out the magical nature of the characters.
I take it the Borderlands have fallen on hard times and it has something to do with the Federation disintegrating or breaking up, but I'm not real clear on just what happened, so the back story seems to be missing.
I like the characters you are building. One thing I noticed is that Mahrya does seem to be perpetually amused. You might want to reign that in a bit when you do your rewrite. Sometimes it is obvious and we don't need to be told this.
The scene where the brat comes out of the pantry was very funny and your description of Mahrya's laughing fit is well done, however, the phrase between the em dashes repeats the scene described immediately before, so it is most likely unnecessary. The reader already knows why she is laughing so hard (and probably is laughing, too). It may have been appropriate if she were telling someone else later on in the story about it, but immediately following the scene you just wrote is redundant.
At the very beginning of this piece you had the phrase: "Four cases of protein pellets, a brat, a sack of sugar ..." Is this a chapter title, something Kelli is saying, or something else? I'm not sure why it is there. There is no further mention of protein pellets or sugar.
There is confusion in the transition from paragraph three to paragraph four. Three is all about the brat. Four starts out with "He" but this "he" is not the brat, but the shopkeeper. You might want to take a hard look at this part.
This sounds like a lot of suggestions, but it probably wouldn't take a whole lot for you to tighten this piece up. It's a decent story and I think it would be worthwhile to do so.
Keep up the good work. This one has a lot of promise.
You turned the anger from the sense of abandonment into a happy ending, and that is not always easy to do in a way that seems plausible. The brevity of this story didn't really leave room for you to expand on this ending, but it still worked.
I don't have much to offer you in the way of suggestion for improvement other than if you decide to revisit the piece to make it longer, a little more emotional ups and downs for Amy before she accepts her new life might add to the story. There were a couple of spelling errors, but I think if you leave this alone for a few days and go back to read through it, you'll catch those.
Keep up the good work!
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