I feel your pain. I'm an atheist and I too find hearing those snake-oil salesmen selling Jesus to the gullible masses to be a mindnumbing ordeal. Their pitch is so obviously made up it's amazing anyone falls for it...but they do.
I'm not the one to judge its success to the poetic form but its message is spot on.
Well, Bob sounds like a dick. Don't let that redneck jack-off push you around. I like this. It reads like a mantra spoken to one's self to prepare for an inevitable confrontation with Bob the Bully. I think it's a scenario many people can probably relate to.
I'm enjoying reading more and more poetry since joining this website. This piece reminds me of Poe's "The Bells" -- it starts off happy and upbeat and gradually shifts tone to sullen and morose. It's an effective approach.
So I liked this and enjoyed following the tonal shift.
I'm learning to appreciate poetry a lot more than before so I feel like I'm getting better at critiquing it. I can only consider this to be okay. It's not great but it's not bad, it's okay. For me, the greeting card sentimentality is a turn off.
But that's just me. Others could be moved by it so take my $0.02 for what it's worth.
First, I want to give you props for establishing a mood for this story. I've read several ghost stories here and I'm dinging most of them for failing to establish a mood so good on you for that but I have to admit a few things confused me.
You describe Jay as having been a sweet bundle of joy and then suggest it's his restless spirit that afflicts these people with pain and emotional turmoil. I don't get it. Was Jay just an innocent baby taken too soon or a malevolency that brings about the distress and misery felt by the characters?
If it had been a mental condition that afflicted Ann-Louise it would have died with her but then it begins again when Laura adopts the kitten which suggests it was something beyond just Ann-Loise and her mental health. If so, and if the spirit of Jay is responsible, what explanation is there for his malice? He was just a baby when he died so why would he be causing others to suffer. That piece of information isn't clear.
I also didn't understand these multiple references to a grape.
So props for making an effort to tell a moody ghost story but I found some of the storytelling to be a bit unclear.
I'm going to be brutally honest here; in its current form this story does not work -- at all. Here's the problem; the approach you've taken lacks any dramatic heft. To start with, you do nothing to establish a mood. The phone just rings, she picks it up, chats with Uncle Jack. The end.
Is that it? Tell me a little about this woman: is she old, young. sick, healthy, lonely, married, widowed, give me something. I know nothing about this character and because I know nothing about her, what do I care if she gets butchered by some maniac later in the night. She hasn't been made real for me.
Not only did you not establish a fitting mood but the dialogue within the call itself is so prosaic. She could just as easily have been chatting with her insurance agent about her home/auto coverage as with a dead relative offering a grim warning of impending doom.
I get that it's a short story, I get that you're creating just a snapshot of a paranormal incident but the rules of good storytelling: drama, character, mood, and dialogue still apply.
Did you see the 2013 renake of Evil Dead? It was a gorefest and it came to mind as I was reading your story. The spread of the madness in that movie was possession rather than an airborne contagion but the people went from normal to murderously insane within moments, highlighted by the same twitching/jerking motion you describe your characters exhibiting. So you broke no new ground conceptually but I see what you were going for -- but that's a bit of a problem; I guessed what was going to happen as soon as they started cutting into the farmer and I was right. When you tell a story, think about what readers are likely to guess might happen then do something else. If they guess right, like I did, then the concept is too familiar. Find a way to change it up so if I guess, make it so I guessed wrong. The first ideas are usually the most familiar so when you get them, think deeper about them so that you don't go down the same path others have already gone down many time before unless you can come up with something new or unexpected to make it work. Coming up with new ideas and breathing life into an old concept is the most fun and creative part of the writing process. Embrace it!
Overall, in its current form, your handling of the story was a bit too predictable to really engage me. Re-think it with an eye toward making it less familiar. Come up with some new direction to surprise the reader if you choose to do rewrites.
That said, I'll point out a few errors that you missed in the proofread.
-- Three nurses and the anesthesiologist, "dress" in their pale blue smocks and masks, were prepping the room. Dr. Sorenson gazed at his tablet. His eyes scanned "screen" then he... --
Should be "dressed" and "scanned the screen"
-- The head nurse scrubbed his abdomen with iodine then topped "is" by smearing... --
What does the "is" mean?
-- Leroy scanned down his checklist, marking it as each step...--
You refer to this character as Leroy throughout the piece but it really should be Dr. Sorenson. Referring to him as Leroy fails to capture his character's value as a medical professional.
-- On the monitor, the protrusion finally came into view. It was dull grey once "I" was dried. --
Is this supposed to be "once it was dried?"
-- The lead surgeon gazed up into the camera along with two nurses before "going" proceeding. --
Extraneous word.
-- "Normally, the microphones inside the operating room were switched off, but Leroy switched them on." --
This is a clumsy sentence in the middle of an eventful scene. Maybe more like "Dr. Sorenson, alarmed by the madness exploding in the operating theater, switched on the audio feed and heard the screams and wails rising up from the bloodbath below."
-- Leroy watched helplessly as anyone who dared enter the operating room was overcome by the smell of whatever the patient had in his body. --
You haven't clearly established that the horrid smell is the source of the contagion. Maybe something more like "Dr. Sorenson watched helplessly as those entering the room were overcome by the horrid smell which appeared to be the source of the contagion emanating from the unholy mass infecting the patient's body."
Calling it a "whatever" isn't exactly gripping.
-- Startled hospital worker and visitors froze... --
These would more accurately be referred to as hospital employees rather than hospital workers. It's a small detail but small details are still important.
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