Can someone please, please, PLEASE read and critque this?Chapter One:
Prelude and Fugue
Amos
It was ironic: Ending a Vessel's life at the same place that mine had also ended. Cliché that today happened to be the day before my own death a year ago. I felt nostalgic, reminiscent. The weather outside the window was exactly the same as it had been that day: Rainy and foggy. Mother nature must be reveling; the circumstances were too non-discreet to be writ off as pure coincidence.
The interior of the room was the one thing that was original, altered from how it had been in my memory of a foregone life. Before, the place had been relatively bear, a small TV, a couch, and an armchair being the only decorative items. Now though, the walls had been repainted, overlapping the decaying murky brown with plain white. A shag rug was in the center of the room accompanied with a plasma screen TV. Facing it were three leather arm chairs, the kind that were in prime condition unlike the one that had been there before, the one with tears and white stuffing coming out of them and scraps hidden inside its folds. Paintings, vases, round glass tables, there were too many exquisite, in comparison, changes to account for, but these specific details caught my eye. Part of me expected for this place to stay in stasis, a single place of the world that would always remain constant while everything around it changed. Theses changes evoked that the world had continued to flourish, and in some cases decayed, even after I had left it. I was an unneeded number to its equation. It didn't matter if I was there or if I weren't there, the sum would always be the same. The world had moved on. I hadn't. I was and felt like nothing, if nothingness is possible to conceive. Having this callous fact shoved in front of my face was painful reality, a cold slap in the face.
I closed the apartment door behind me, snuffing out the crack of light from the hallway that had escaped into the room, and locked it. It was a full moon today, but the clouds were eclipsing its pale rays. The room was dark. Even though I was part of the Darkness, it didn't grant me sight-all-seeing: I still needed a light to see. From the obscurity of my vision, I could see a lamp in the corner of the room placed on top of a stack of boxes. My eyes were beginning to adjust, but I still walked slowly over to it, ensuring that I didn't trip over anything. I pulled the switch and its shaded, yellow light illuminated the room, dampening its bleakness. I turned around and set off to settle myself into one of the armchairs. I stretched my legs and lazily rested my arms onto its rests.
What I was doing was sickening, both an insult to hers and my own memory. Bur I found that for the most part, I really didn't care. Stoicism was becoming my forte, slowly developing into an unhealthy habit. It was a necessary, but unfortunate, trait that was needed where was I was now: Hell. Almost literally. If I allowed my heart to overshadow my craving instincts, I would be punished. Punished beyond the likes of which I had ever experienced before.
In the very beginning, I had wondered why I still had a heart. No longer being human it shouldn't be needed. But He had answered my unasked question, along with many other blatant truths. He had said that since I was still in existence, though maybe an unbearable one, a heart was required to be acknowledged by the Worlds, unless I was to be seen as nothing to them. In a literal sense. The Worlds' acknowledgments of our existence was crucial, the very essence of our goal. This is so for Them as well.
As long as it remained intact, I was basically immortal, immune to aging and ninety-nine point nine percent of any fatal hurts. The point-one percent was the only thing capable of killing me, but the likeliness of it happening were tremendously slim. Impossible.
My ears pricked up as the sound of jangling keys issued close from beyond the other side of the door, stationary, the sound didn't fade away. This wasn't a passerby. In a flash, I jumped up from the comforts of the armchair and rushed off to the lamp, turning it off, darkness capturing the room again. My heart rate immediately picked up in double-time, gushing with excitement carried in my veins throughout my body. This was pleasing to me; I hadn't felt a surge of emotion like this since the last time I had to do…this. Apparently, the effect didn't got old but instead ripened with redundancy.
The lock clicked and the doorknob turned as the door was swiftly opened. The light of the hallway bedazzled the Vessel: A man donning a brown suit who looked to be in his thirties, his black hair tied in a ponytail from the back of his head. He yawned widely, closed the door, and flicked on the light switch beside him simultaneously. My eyes squinted as the overhead light turned on. The lamp's light had been dim, but this was exuberant, almost unbearable. It didn't bother him in the slightest. Yawning again, he slugged his way over to the coat rack by the lamp in the corner I was in, and pulled off his jacket, hanging it onto one of the hooks.
He was tangibly close. I could perfectly see every minute blemish and speck of unshaven hair populating his face, every deep bag burrowed underneath his bloodshot eyes. My body was going haywire, reacting as it usually did whenever a Vessel was nearby. But since this one was so close, everything became proportionately magnified
Posted by BEKKI!
Beautifully written :)
Keep up the good work!
:D
Posted by Jasmine
Wow, did you write this?!?! I'm impressed. You are are very good writer. It is a very deep and interesting piece. It is from a very unusual viewpoint.
Posted by popstarange_321
I absolutely loved it!!! I think u have a real talent!!! U should definatley write a book!!!! If u domI'd luvvvvveeeee to edit it!!!
Posted by Alberto E
Well, since this is your first chapter, one of your objectives should be to develop an expectation, maintain tension and leave the reader awaiting a denouement.
The way I see it (an I may be epically mistaken), you try to establish the element of tension by keeping the reader confused about what he/she should expect. Starting the chapter in medias res, narrated by a dead character with unclear background/objectives raises the reader's curiosity. On the other hand, "rainy and foggy" weather is directly associated with the notion of death; it's something I would expect as a reader, so it works directly against your objective of creating tension by catching the reader unprepared. I also think it would be interesting if you spent more time describing how empty/barren the environment used to be, rather than how alive the room is now, just playing on notion of death.
Another effective technique you use is to leave the reader hanging at times; the curiosity of the reader has already been aroused, so for example your use of "I hadn't felt a surge of emotion like this since the last time I had to do…this" should leave him/her wondering what 'this' is; effectively, just making the chapter more intriguing. However, you start giving away too much information when you point out that "As long as it remained intact, I was basically immortal, immune to aging and ninety-nine point nine percent of any fatal hurts. The point-one percent was the only thing capable of killing me, but the likeliness of it happening were tremendously slim. Impossible." This pretty much gives away the denouement, and by removing the aura of secrecy around the narrator also makes the text less interesting. You should see how you can work around all that information, as I read the chapter i think that was the bit that collapsed what you had worked up to so far.
And, just planning for the future, you will have to come up with some very good explanation why the dead character is back after a year and from where the near immortality stems. Maybe you should use some twist while you're doing that to keep the sense of mystery going, and if you will, you might want to build the basis for the twists now, while you're still introducing, to make the irony even more powerful.
Nyways thats just my take on it, hope it was useful.
Orignal From: Can someone please, please, PLEASE read and critque this?
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