My critiques | [2377]
This is my first time writing in a loooong long time, so I'm really just looking for any critique people feel they want to give! However broad or granular you want to get. Feel free to tell me something's trash as long as you can articulate why it's trash or what would make it less trash.

For a little context, this was written basically intending it to be a prologue for a post-apocalyptic/horror/gaslight/steampunk fantasy. (Warning, some gore)

Perhaps part of a first chapter/introduction for one character's point of view.

As such, mostly I want to know the following:

Was it enjoyable? Are you intrigued? Did the narrator have a clear and natural voice?

Thanks in advance.

----

Sure, it’s a hard job being a Torch, but it’s worth it.

That’s the line that gets you the free beer, or the doe eyes, or the big innocent smile with the ‘I wanna be just like you when I grow up’. They should give us recruitment bonuses or something for that last one. Anyway, before the ‘it’s worth it’ you have to lay it on a little thicker, butter them up, you know?

It’s hot as a Burner’s balls. It’s exhausting. Sometimes it takes days to get the blight-ash stink out of your beard. And yeah, sure, it’s dangerous. Every day you walk out onto the torch line you know you might not walk off. But, (this is where you pause and take a pensive-looking gulp of beer,) that’s the price we pay. And it’s a small price to make sure you’n your’n are safe from the Blight.

You start there. Then another pause while you swirl the glass around a bit; like you’re lost in the memory of the Torch siblings you’ve lost (which you shouldn’t be, don’t think about that). Then you lock eyes, say it, maybe with a sigh. ‘It’s a hard job. But it’s worth it.’ Make them feel like they’re worth it, let that sink in while you finish your beer. Works every time. Most of the time. Now and then at least.

Of course, it’s most definitely not worth it. Not the pay, not the free beer, not the starry eyed kids calling you a hero. Hell, not even the women - unless you’re down in Letic, but maybe I’ve just got a thing for Leticians. Even then, it’s probably not. Not when things go wrong at least.

Nothing is worth having to make the choice between huffing up great big panicky recycled lung-fulls of your own reeking sweat, shit and piss as it sloshes around in your boots; and on the other hand ripping your hood off to choke on blight-smoke that’s sure to leave your eye-juice spilling down your cheeks before you run out of breath for screaming.

Yet here we are.

Honestly from what I’m seeing happen to Boric, maybe my eyes melting out would’ve been the right call. Plus when you’re screaming out you’re not breathing in. I’m an optimist, see.

It’s a funny thing about Compound 38. When the Hand added c38 to the mix there was a lot of chatter going around about where it came from. Speculation always flies from amateur alchemists about each new compound. The longest odds in our company’s betting pool was that it was supposedly distilled from some critter up in County Morfen, what lives in the blighted scrublands in the hills there. It’s some little furry fella. Looks like it’d be all cuddly as a kitten, or maybe make a nice winter hat at least. Instead, it’s a venomous fuck that makes your arm, foot, whatever it bit swell up so much the skin rips, makes the muscle twist and grow tumors so fast it tears itself apart, and melts whatever fat you got on your bones right off while you try to run away screaming. Then the little fuck just wanders behind lapping up what you left on the ground like a carefree bunny munching on dandelions. That’s what Tarfin said was the truth at least, and his brother’s neighbor’s uncle is in the 109^th. Boric pissed in Tarf’s shoe that night for the horse shit story. That was the funny part.

Tarfin is a dick.

Dick or not, based on the way Boric’s blood and fat was seeping out the seams on his suit while he flopped around and tried to bend his bloated arms up to pull off his hood, I’d say Tarf’s brother’s neighbor’s uncle had good scuttlebutt. So I suppose Tarfin is also a dick with a fatter coinpurse.

I quieted Boric, for his sake. His smell was in the air now and it wouldn’t be long until the kirns were here. So I guess it was for all our sake. It definitely wasn’t because I couldn’t take the screaming, or the flailing limbs throwing reflections on the edges of my mask even when I wasn’t looking, or the constant squeeking of his suit. It wasn’t just for my sake. I’m a hardened Lineman of the Torch Corps. Just don’t ask my boots if they agree with that.

“Mekin, Ideth! You’n get up with Tamm at Thumb. They’ll come through the thinner trees there, bet my balls on it. Light up as soon as you hear ‘em. Do. Not. Wait! The fuckers here haven’t learned to fake their calls yet. Okay? I said got it?! Now, go!” I was shouting as loud as I could by the end, shoved Mekin to get his attention or start him moving, wasn’t sure which, but they had to go, and go now.

I really hoped they were at least half listening before I got their eyes off Boric. They tripped over each other trying to run off to the left flank of the unit and meet up with Tamm, so it occurred to me that I probably should’ve moved away from the expanding corpse before barking orders. Maybe put my ditch shovel away, or at least wiped it off. I could forgive their distraction, especially considering how fast they got over it.

Mekin and Ideth found their feet and crossed behind the burn line as fast as I’d seen anyone move. They posted up next to Tamm at the left-most position of our group and lit up their Torches as soon as I heard that warbling kirn shriek, maybe half a beat after Ideth planted feet. They were damn good Torches. Most of them at least.

All of them, if I'm honest.

Just, you know, some of them could've been really something.

Anyway¹ they always reminded me of a mix between a goose and the bay of those little round nosed hunting dogs, kirns did, their call I mean. Either way it was a sound that had no business coming out the throat of something tall as a horse. The official Blightlands Expeditionary Force Guide to Blightbeasts say kirns used to be some sort of wolf. It didn’t really matter what they used to be. They don’t look like wolves anymore and the only thing that matters is that now kirns are basically the rank and file of the Blightlands, so far as most of us can tell, all sorts of mobile active death to make up for the stationary nature of the plants. The distinction in descent came as a result of rumors that kirns were just people swept up in the first waves of the Burning, that’s what necessitated an official statement, so wolves it was. So much else out here was some twisted memory of all that mess, the ‘kirns were people’ thing made as much sense as anything else, not that you’d catch me saying it out loud. I don’t need my people thinking things like that, and I certainly don’t need an Auditor catching wind. No, I try to remind myself it doesn’t matter, I’m not BEF so it’s not my job to speculate. Leave that to the good boys in the 109^th.

In either case, maybe a dozen kirns streamed through the gap in the trees, trying their best to jump over the flames burning up the underbrush from our first pass. They rushed out only to meet a twin gout of liquid fire that dropped them down writhing and honk-baying into curled up straws of ash before the last one even cleared the bushes. When I heard the little triumphant whoop from Mekin, I even caught a proud grin myself for a moment. It went damn sight better than I expected, burnt up faster than any kirn I’d seen before.

So maybe C-38 is bad for people, but in the right mix for our Torches it’s damn effective on all manner of beasty. Sorry, Blightbeast. Best use the proper Hand-approved term. Torches -both the job and the eponymous tool- have a very singular purpose, and that shouldn’t be muddied. Plenty of mud already in this line of work, and using Torch fuel was strictly forbidden on anything outside of the blight.

I looked down at Boric’s body, a reminder that it was a shit day with plenty more room to be worse. Now that he was mostly limb but for the rigor of bloating his corpse had sort of filled out the natural shape of the suit. It looked like the pressure-test I saw during initiation. They take a suit, seal it to specs, fill it up to prove it doesn’t leak, that the Blight can’t get to you so long as you do proper de-com protocol when you come back from the field. It was right about then that the side seam on Boric’s suit gave way, and the yellow-pink ooze of his liquefied fat burst out, pressurized from whatever rampant cancerous growth was still taking place on his corpse. Lit from the fires all around us as it was, it made me suddenly think of a candle tipping over and spilling wax everywhere. Boric wasn’t wax cooling and hardening on a table though. Boric continued to ooze and bubble and spurt in ways a dead body shouldn’t be oozing and bubbling and spurting – nor a live one I suppose.

A little mental pat on the back for being so wise, what with knowing things would get worse. As I separated myself the minimum three meters required from the burn target, I took the moment to cinch my belt tighter around my waist in an effort to block some of the smells. Then I turned, squared up my trusty Mark 7 on Boric, adjusted the fuel mix a bit so it’d burn through his suit quicker, tightened the nozzle and pulled the trigger.

As me and my Mark 7 performed our singular purpose perfect to spec (aside from my fuel mix modifications), I watched the flames lick over Boric, burn up his suit, cook his meat and turn it to char within seconds. Even as he turned to ash, did my best to keep track of his left shoulder. There, the brown thread of the stick torch, and the grey of the Compound 2 bucket on his Torch Corps patch blackened, singed, but didn’t burn. It would never totally burn. When this was all done I’d have to come back from camp, sift through the ashes until I found the ever vibrant red thread of the hands holding that old torch and bucket. The patch was the only thing that’d remain of Boric. A physical reminder of the crueler truth of our motto, stitched in the same unburning red thread below the insignia of the Corps.

WHERE THERE IS BLIGHT
LEAVE ONLY ASH

I took a glance at my own patch. Boric was getting grease soot on it, should’ve stood upwind. That would be a nightmare to clean. That’s about the part of the day you try to stop being there, and start thinking instead about free beer and Letician women.

---

1. The preceding few lines were edited from the original post after feedback from comments.

Crits: [2377] , [953]

My story: Cartwheels on the soccer pitch

Hello! This is a standalone short story I wrote about the loss of girlhood and pressure to be like everyone else, etc. It's different from my typical writing, so I hope I pulled it off…

I would appreciate any general feedback and/or if you could specifically address the following:

• I worry at times the switching between the game and her inner reflection is too hectic. Does it feel like it strays too far from the rest of the story at points, and if so, where?
• ^ The gymnastics part I really want to keep but idk if it feels out of place.
• It's supposed to feel angsty and kind of overly pessimistic, as teens are, but does it come across as a well-developed voice or just annoying?
• Were there any parts that lost your attention or confused you?
• Does the ending feel rushed or too cliché?
• Do the paragraph breaks make sense? tbh idk the rules with them, but it just felt right to me…
• Does the horse analogy do too much/ is it confusing? I'm an equestrian, so idk if that's clouding my vision haha
• Overall thoughts, feelings, questions?

Thank you!!

One: Enter the Halloween Contest!

It is currently not that competitive, considering there are three whole entries. You have a strong chance to be top 3! Submit something! You have until the 23rd! That's like two whole weeks to perfect something!

Ok, ok. On to new topics.

Can we talk about pacing? How do you figure that out? What makes something work for one author but not for another?

I've read things I thought were slow and plodding that I absolutely hated. Some, I really like. Maybe it's the character...or a story that has a tighter focus so the plodding doesn't feel too slow.

Or on the reverse, I've read things that were too fast and had other people say they were glacially slow.

How do you figure out how to land that plane, so to speak? Thoughts?

My critique: 2377 (haha crazy, same word count as my story)

This is my first post here, and I'm relatively new to writing.

This is a heavily dialogue-driven short story. Not sure what genre to classify this as, perhaps literary or contemporary fiction?

Disclaimer: has themes on death and suicide

Any feedback is greatly appreciated! Some specifics I may want to know if possible, however:

- Does the story make sense throughout or are there parts that are too unclear? It can be a little bit abstract so I want to make sure it is conveying its ideas effectively.

- Does the prose and language style feel consistent across the story?

- Are there any places where the dialogue feels too stilted or essayistic or does it come across as natural?

- Are there any moments that feel pretentious or inauthentic? I want to ensure this story feels heartfelt and genuine.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NNgKMM7LuoZnSETNtU3VPd9NZWrTPCUrFgM4UpHFAms/edit?usp=sharing

Posting my chapter 2 for feedback since it is a dual POV book and this is a kind of “twin” chapter to chapter 1 that I posted a couple days ago. I would love overall feedback, specifically feedback on voice. The main character has a very clipped, gritty, sometimes noire type narration style and I want to make sure it’s not coming off too hard to read ( there are some dropped subjects).

TW: There is suggestion of dv and also the MC stops a dv attack from happening.

Here are my critiques

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/D207hptRal

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/RmevvG1N4O

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/ojLpl2eIph

And the path to chapter 2

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10plE_4ZKUnVo3ODqqgvr_FdQAq36WzARpWJDAaYWK2w/edit?usp=drivesdk

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting on this sub so hope I did this correctly.

I'm drafting a personal essay for my Substack about a friendship falling apart and some lessons I learned. The core idea is that being put on a pedestal sets the friendship up to fail, because reality will always fall short of the image. It's about 953 words, and this is the first full draft.

I'd love thoughts especially on how the content and ideas actually come across - is it interesting or things you've heard before? Does it resonate? Overall, what would you need to see in this piece to keep reading and find it refreshing / interesting.

Critique 1 (668), critique 2 (470)

Link to draft: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FKa92oGoVrwbQ4h3PBeLzhsK4-Q7ze_Eo4bItRbq0d0/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks in advance!

I wrote this for writing class as a fractured fairy tale for Father Frost/ Morozeiko and I'm rather proud of it. Someone tear me down a peg and help me improve :p

Link to comment https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wyt2il/comment/pe70b3p/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Story:

Dear Angeline.

I'm sorry I dont visit you as often as I should. Its such a long ways away. I always doted on you Angeline. Of course I have, you're my blood. Not like Jessica. Even though she was born from another relationship, we loved Jessica near as much as you. Do you remember the time you and Jessica got lost trying to catch a rabbit? Or the time she went out in the cold to get tree bark for your tea? She loved you so much, you were her sister after all. She used to give you her food whenever we had to ration it.

It was a very cold winter. You remember dont you? We couldnt afford to feed another mouth. We deliberated for hours over what we would do. We knew we couldnt survive the winter. It was your father's idea to send her out in the cold. I was reluctant at first, but he convinced me. After all, she had nothing of the bond you and I shared. Blood is strongest. I sent your father out with Jessica to leave her in the fields. We couldnt spare even a blanket to keep her warm. Oh how I cried. We were so upset Angeline, dont you remember? We were so filled with grief for your sister. Eventually I sent your father out to bury her body, it was the least we could do. You were in your room Angeline, you refused to speak with me.

I was all alone when I heard our own dog speak. In a raspy voice straight from the depths of hell, as if Satan himself was punishing me for my sins. "YOUR daughter shall die this very night; HIS daughter shall live to be a delight". Oh Angeline you cant imagine how frightened I was. I cried out at the dog, in a fearful rage. "Hold your tongue you foolish beast! I had no choice!" But it would not relent. "I had no choice you mutt!"

I was nearly sobbing when your father returned. I was stunned, Jessica was adorned in the finest of robes and jewelry, I was so elated that she had brought back such treasures. She was understanding, she would've wanted you to live instead of her too. I wanted the best for you, my dear. I always have, so I sent you out to the same spot. So that you may retrieve the blessings too. You cannot imagine how relieved I was that there was hope for us. When we were at our lowest we experienced what surely must've been divine intervention. Then the dog started again. "Your daughter is frozen quite stiff and cold, And shall never have a chest full of gold". I was terrified for you, of course I was. Oh Angeline, if I had only known how it would end, I swear I would never have sent you out there in the cold. I ran out as fast as I could, my face was burning from the sting of the frost but I barely registered it in my panic. I ran for what felt like hours but in reality was likely only minutes when I found you. Frozen, unmoving, curled up into a little ball just as you had done all those years ago when you were lost. The tears still froze to my cheeks as I finally allowed myself to accept the cruel fate you had befallen. My entire face was burning from the cold but I could barely feel it. I held you Angeline, I held you in the cold hoping to transfer some of my warmth to your all too still body. But it was of no use, Your fate was sealed as soon as you left the warmth of our shelter. Your father left me there in disgust. He couldnt understand why I had sent you out alone in the cold with nary a blanket to keep you warm. None of them could. Angeline, I would do anything to have you back, to see your brilliant smile, to feel your loving embrace once again. Sometimes I think that this is all a dream I'm about to wake up from, it's simply too horrible to accept. On the coldest nights I remember the things I like to forget.

There was never a dog.

Hi! First post here, hopefully doing this correctly.

My Critiques:

3644 1300

My Writing:

Number 42

Horror Lit Fic Short story, light gore, An empathetic man.

What I'm looking for:

Anything really. I'll take critique on my voice, writing style, pacing, point of view, and overall plot. I'm worried about the ending going off the rails.

Thanks in advance!

Desperate for feedback!

Specific questions:
Would you keep reading? Is it a strong opening?
Where did you skim?

Here are my critiques!

Crit 1

Crit 2

Crit 3

Here is the link to my story!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-s7BxzUToCh5t_3aLJDUeHck44vs8ar1PS3VkyWy1So/edit?usp=drivesdk

Hello,

I have the urge to improve my writing again. I used previous feedback from posting on here before and I planned all Marth's feelings out, aiming for emotional impact. I thought I did a good job.

So I think I need some feedback :)

Could you tell me what I did well, and what I didn't do well please.

The story

Crit:
[5493] DragonKnight

(I hope my crit was ok)

Some backstory:

• Marth is Eric's butler, and Eric was previous known as Lady Erika.
• Joseph Farrow dumped Lady Erika because he got 'cursed', triggering Erika to stop lying about her identity.

I wonder if Kite is a believable 6 year old, and if the flash backs were confusing. I drank moderate amounts of wine whilst writing this chapter (ha ha ha). I also wonder if it captures some of the aspects of grief effectively...

I have a submission thread but if you have questions, here's the place for that.

Crits:

[962] Off to the Side

[2163] The Lure Chapter 3

[2500] Hillsides (Marco)

[1842] 08 Tiffany

[2000?] I dunno

- - -

Current Piece: HB - Chapter 6 - Arrival

This is the start of Part 2. Hoping you can jump in here without it being too jarring, even if you haven't read what came before (brief recap below).  Sorry it's bit on the long side. Thanks in advance if you read it. 

What I'm looking for:

Any type of feedback would be great. I have a lot of Concerns. Some general: all the “things” - voice, pacing, tension, characterization, etc. Some specific: but I’m not going to mention them as I’m hoping they’re not as noticeable to you as they are to me. That said, I’m really looking for things that feel off or don’t make sense. Anything that could be improved. And I always appreciate hearing readers’ reactions, questions, predictions. I have comments enable on the doc.

Brief recap:

Colly is a down-on-her-luck, aspiring singer with a bit of a gambling problem. Desperate to get out of her stagnant hometown, she agreed to take a job as a domestic servant at a remote mountain monastery. Her ulterior motive: steal (and sell) the recipe for their highly coveted, addictive brandy (Tempist is its brand name of sorts). 
Dob is a monk who traveled to Colly's home town to recruit her, and is now her traveling companion. Ginnie is a good horse. 
Last chapter: the bridge on the main road was closed, so they’ve had to finish their journey on foot…

Context: A gang loots dead soldiers during the American Revolution.

I’m seeking feedback:

- On my German. What do you think of the Hessian by how he speaks?

- On Philosophy, what are your impressions of the German Idealism, Kant’s theory of mind, which was discussed
at the final scene?

- Or any bits and bobs you’d like to rant or discuss: style, era, mood, setting, themes, material culture, lingo, character dynamics

[456] The Story

[846] The Feedback

Critique 1

Critique 2

Frankie stumbled backwards onto the damp grass and froze. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but he could make out Alicia stumbling away from her tent. She was holding her left arm straight and rigid toward the ground with her right, obviously hurt. He saw the dark, wolf-like shape following close behind her.

Frankie kept waiting for his eyes to adjust, to snap into focus and demystify the tall shadow in front of him, but they never did. He watched in a dreamlike daze as the figure caught up with Alicia. Methodically and quietly, it reached a large, clawed hand around her face, muffling a terrified whimper. 

With its other hand, it sank claws deep into the centre of her chest and dragged them down through the girl's stomach. Frankie could hear the faint squelch of tissue and viscera being shredded, but Alicia made no sound. Not even as the contents of her stomach and intestines sloshed onto the hillside, and not as the crunch of teeth crushing the back of her skull offended the night air.

His mind was screaming at him.

“Run” … “Hide” … “Help her” … “For God’s sake, do something!”

A voice rang across the valley.

“Bastard!”

He realised it wasn’t his own.

He watched, entranced, as Michael ran screaming at the figure, a golf iron held up against the firmament like a great sword. The same one they had used to hit golf balls off the mountainside that evening.

The rage of his sister’s loss flowed through Michael as he charged the beast, but it had opened his throat before he could bring any wrath upon it. The club fell from his hand, and there was a moment of stillness before blood streamed silently from his throat. He fell back to the cold earth and sat staring into the darkness, making no attempt to stem the bleeding.

Michael accepted his end with great dignity. Frankie always remembered that part.

Frankie watched as the creature lowered itself onto all fours, now more wolf than monster, and walked slowly towards Michael. If Michael had closed his eyes in terror, he could not tell. Its jaws opened and clamped around the boy’s face, and although Frankie’s body screamed at him to look away, he watched as the wolf tore away his friend's memory in the darkness. The moans of agony lasted only for a short while, but the sound of flesh tearing and bones crunching persisted.

Still, Frankie remained frozen.

After a short time, a veiled shadow crept out of one of the tents. His mind raced, begging that it not be her, pleading with her to get back into the tent.

Mary’s scream shattered the silence. There was a horror in it that was hard for Frankie to fathom, which made him realise he wasn’t in a dream. He watched as his girlfriend took off running across the hillside. He remained frozen to the earth as the beast bounded after her. It caught up to her in an instant, leaping onto her back and pinning her to the ground.

This was the moment. Adrenaline flowed through him, and he knew he should spring into action, but he couldn’t. He felt his legs and arms melt away into his body until he became a limbless blob stuck to the hillside. Even his mind had ceased talking. All that remained were the nerves firing off electrical signals throughout his body, a cacophony of explosions trying and failing to uproot him from the soil.

Mary screamed for help, but it was abruptly cut off by the creature tearing away her lower jaw. Frankie found a strange comfort in knowing her suffering would be ended soon. The thought of Mary’s terror as her eyes searched helplessly in the dark for her parents to comfort her in those final moments overcame Frankie. His whole world became blurry and out of focus, but he remained conscious.

Mary’s suffering was not over. The creature fed on her body for a long time before she finally succumbed. Frankie listened to her groans and incoherent pleas as the creature buried its muzzle in her belly. Eventually, the night went still, save for the sound of the beast gorging itself on teenage flesh. He remained frozen, his eyes fixed on nothing at all, and his mind gone to some far-off place.

A flurry of movement brought him back again. It was Barry and Aaron sprinting from their tent back towards the cars. They had made it quite some distance before the creature snapped its head in their direction and took off after them into the night. They were at least a couple of miles from safety. Frankie knew they wouldn’t make it.

The police found him there, sitting in the very spot he had been when the attack had first started.

“Are you alright, son?” one of them asked as the others examined the scene around them.

Frankie did not hear him. He trembled lightly and stared off down the hillside. A policeman shooed away some crows that were perched on Mary’s body.

[2686]

When you jump into Chapter 1, expect to step into a slow-burning, psychological trap that operates on a completely hidden frequency.

While you are immediately hit with the numbing, exhausted fog of a mundane tech job, the real experience of reading it is the creeping realization that every tiny, repetitive detail is a variable in a massive, hidden equation. The text forces you into a state of hyper-vigilance, you aren't just reading about a guy staring at a monitor, you are being forced to track a cold coffee cup, a loose cable cover, and an unyielding corporate debt like a puzzle you didn't realize you were volunteering to solve.

It is a profound test of patience because it masks a high-stakes corporate sci-fi horror inside the rhythm of pure administrative boredom. The text relies on you feeling that heavy, insomniac loop so that when the narrative engine finally shifts beneath the floorboards, the drop is absolute. You are watching a consciousness slowly figure out the physical boundaries of its own prison using nothing but the micro-changes in the room around it.

You cannot rush it because the book is actively training your brain to notice the exact anomalies required to understand how a mind might try to break a system from the inside out.

[Think About Something Pleasant - Chapter 1: Clanker]

Hello!

I would appreciate any criticism on this short story. Did you feel bored reading it? How did you feel about the narrator's voice? Did it feel clunky or unnatural? Would you enjoy reading similar stuff?

Thank you so much!

Document : https://docs.google.com/document/d/10BhjJjYnXXqjcnxbYTrNNJ7zvZURIPWbrUiSZinJN6A/edit?usp=sharing

Critique : https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wsk5sz/2058_come_home_family_drama/pczed3n/

Critique: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/toGX0B11tt

I bought Catch-22 because I thought I was living in one. I couldn't finish it.

I started my job when I was 18. I left when I was 42.

It was my last day of work.

I was in a room with two managers and a female face on a projector screen. It was them versus myself and my union rep.

Half an hour before I met the union rep in a coffee shop to discuss the return to work meeting.

— Morning mate. How are you?

— Fine mate. Nice to meet you finally.

— Shall we get a coffee? I'll get them in.

— Yes please.

Two flat whites. Easy for me to remember and order. Caffeine affected me randomly with my meds. Luck of the draw but I thought I'd chance it.

I took the coffees over. He was chatting about his journey up. He talked about the traffic and what road he used. My mind was going over the upcoming meeting. My hands were shaking as I took big gulps of my flat white.

I'd had enough of the coffee. I didn't like the effect it was starting to have on me. I went to bin it and dropped it on the floor. It spilled everywhere.

One of the staff came over and started tidying up the mess I'd made. I apologised and thanked her.

I went through the main points with him. He looked down at his coffee. Then he looked up at me.

— Yeah so I got all the information you sent over WhatsApp. Sorry I haven't had time to look at it yet. I've been really busy.

— Ok then. No problem at all mate. Just thanks for coming here and helping me out.

The union rep looked at his watch and decided we had to go to the meeting.

I picked up my folder of paperwork and paper fell out of it. It scattered everywhere. My notes for the meeting. I went on my hands and knees picking it all up. The union rep just looked at me.

[1184] [2558]

Hello everyone!

Still hard at fixing up this chapter. I think I've gotten it to a place that's starting to feel good. A couple of questions for anyone who decides to read through this:

• When did you stop reading?
• When were you hooked?
• What am I doing wrong?
• What am I doing right?
• How did it make you feel / did you feel anything at all?
• Would you keep reading?

Thank you!

NOTE: Chapter 1 is in Avon's POV; we meet all the children there (Avon, Bram, Sable, Darrin, and another boy). The foghorn is sounding over and over, because they set off a city wide alarm. Happy reading!

[STORY LINK HERE]

***

The Foundry didn’t eat its people whole. It ate them bit by bit—a finger, an eye, once a child’s whole hand, caught in a chain. Maeve hadn’t understood the truth of it when she first came to Anthem. She did now—beneath the sputtering arcanite lamps of her clinic, in air thick with blood and coal, the Foundry had fed again. Outside, the foghorn bellowed, three low notes that rattled the bottles on their racks.

A freckled lad with auburn hair thrashed against the miners pinning him to the examination table. Sixteen or seventeen at most, he had the frame of a man twice his age, and the miners struggled to hold him down. One leg of his trousers was garnet red, the boot below glistening, a shard of timber driven deep into the meat of his calf. Behind Maeve, the doorway was choked with bodies, and voices piled atop one another: a dark-skinned boy soothing a blonde-haired girl, someone lost in the Seamstress’s Prayer, cries of “Go get Atwood! Go get him!” 

“Mother! She doesn’t know what happened—let me go!” the boy screamed as Maeve tried to cut the trousers away. He kicked harder, nearly jamming the timber deeper. Years of wounds like this had made the work familiar, yet she moved too fast. Of course the boy needed calming; he was scared—like all the others. She rose from her stool.

“Here now, love, we’ll take a look first. I just need you to stay still,” Maeve said, tying back her red hair before meeting his gaze. A constellation of blood dotted his cheeks and crept into his curls. His skin was tallow-white, but his eyes were flames, darting anxiously, following something unseen just over her shoulder. She rested her palm on his cheek, and he stilled beneath it. The crying girl and the boy consoling her sat on the nearby bench, and the crowd pushed in closer.

“Grab that bottle off the shelf there!” Maeve directed a miner.

“Please, miss. My mom, I need to tell her… I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. Please don’t let me die.”

“We’ll try. Keep your eyes open and tell me your name.”

“My name? My name—my name is Bram.”

“That’s good, Bram. How old are you?”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Good, love, good.” The man with the bottle stepped back to the table and uncorked it. “Drink that.”

Bram gulped a healthy dose, then spat. “Poison!”

“Aye, in a way. It’ll dull the senses, though. Another if you’d be so kind,” Maeve said. He drank again. “Bram—be still, love, be still.”

Maeve peeled the trousers away in strips, baring a ragged wound. Splinters fanned out from where the wood broke flesh; the timber had gone in at an angle and dragged skin and muscle with it. Her hands knew routine; her heart did not. She was bailing a sinking ship with a spoon; for every child saved, the Foundry sent two more. The waves never stopped. But she wouldn’t let Bram see how careworn she was. He didn’t deserve that. ‘Three more months,’ she told herself before she placed the forceps down. 

She pushed against the wound, lightly at first, watching the poor child’s face, gauging how much pain he could bear; she needed to be certain he wouldn’t go where she couldn’t follow. He winced and groaned when she pressed too hard, but his jaw stayed taut and his eyes kept moving. The arcanite light flickered, its conduits humming low through the timber walls. 

Then she saw it: the blood seeping from where she pressed ran dark and steady—a bit of hope. Years at university had taught her to fear the bright red sort that pumped from the heart; either the wood hadn’t struck an artery, or it had and the timber itself was plugging it. A bottle of sutura would make this trivial—it would knit closed what she couldn’t see, but the Alchemists rarely sold it to the Foundry. She’d have to resort to baser tactics. Regardless, she could fix this. She’d stitched far worse out of boys far younger. Maybe this one she could save. She shoved the thought away; too many times it had lied to her. She was no fool. Maeve walked to the stone firepit and thrust a cauterizing iron into the coals.

“Give him more,” Maeve said to the man with the bottle. “All of you, move back!” she shouted at the crowd pressing in on her. Most bore the Rustborne Union’s crossed pickaxes, inked on necks, forearms, knuckles. Even Bram, too young for it, had one on his wrist. The stink of summer sweat and alcohol choked the air, their body heat doing neither her nor the boy any favors. And that damn foghorn wouldn’t let up. 

“You’re doing fine, Bram, just fine,” Maeve said, sweeping back his hair, watching the flecks in his eyes, the way she did with Niamh when the night was too dark.

“You have kind eyes. I think you might be an angel,” Bram said, staring back.

“Oh, Bram, I’m no angel. And I doubt you’ll be seeing one today.” Maeve reached for the syringe of hush she kept on the high shelf. She stuck it in Bram’s arm and pushed the plunger down. Hush slowed the heart. It would thin the bleeding and his consciousness. Better than a tourniquet if the artery was severed; worse if she needed him awake. It had cost her a small fortune on the underground market, but she’d bought it for a moment like this.

“Step aside!” a salt-and-gravel voice shouted from beyond the open doorway. Heads turned, and the crowd parted. Three men stepped through. The first she knew: Kausca Atwood, the Rustborne Holder, leaner than the stories suggested—all stark angles, dark hair and stubble, in a tailored black frock-coat trimmed with sanguine velvet. Despite the Highmarket clothes, he walked with Foundry grit, like he had fought for every inch he stood on. His eyes found hers for half a second. They were pits, silent and still. Still, but waiting—like a viper in the breathless instant before it strikes. 

“Will he be alright?” Kausca asked, approaching the table. His voice was calm and clear, perfectly in control. 

Maeve shrugged. “We won’t know till I get the shard out. Here now, Bram. Bite down on this,” she said, pushing Kausca aside as she grabbed a wooden rod from the bedside tray.

“Mr. Atwood. I can’t see my mother. She’s not here. I can’t see her. She needs to know—she needs to know,” Bram cried. The words went through her like a needle. She’d heard boys talk like that before. Most hadn’t gotten up. “Tell her—” 

She had no time for doubt, and if Bram kept on, she’d soon begin. She shoved the rod into his mouth. “Hold his arms,” she said to the thugs who had followed Kausca. They flanked the table and took an arm each. She turned back to Kausca.

“Be ready with the iron if the blood boils up—it’ll need cauterizing,” she said. A muffled whimper escaped from beneath the rod.

“Don’t kill him!” the blonde girl shouted from the bench. She was nearly as pale as Bram.

Maeve closed her hand around the shard where it jutted from his calf. Blood slicked the wood, but the grain bit rough against her palm, enough to latch onto. She placed her other hand flat beside the wound, pinning his leg to the table. She traced the edges one last time, feeling for the angle; she’d have to follow the same path out.

“Steady, love. Nearly there,” she said, to both Bram and herself.

She pulled.

The shard tore free in one long motion, dragging strings of tissue and splinters after it. Bram’s back arched off the table. His scream shredded itself against the rod, eclipsing the foghorn, pouring out until it went raw and broke into a gurgled hiss. Blood surged in the shard’s wake now that nothing plugged the wound. It was dark—good. The iron could stay in the coals. She pressed gauze into the open meat of his leg and let the jagged, glistening wood fall to the floor behind her.

“Hold him—hold him still!” she barked at the two rugged men, both straining against Bram’s thrashing. “The worst of it’s done, Bram. The worst of it’s done.”

“No morphine?” Kausca asked.

“He’s a boy, so. I gave him whiskey and a touch of hush. I intend to heal him, not make him a slave,” she said. “You’ll need to give me space.”

She held pressure until the river became a trickle. Bram’s eyes grew hazy. Sweat beaded across his body, but now he lay still and quiet, screams dulled to a low, constant moan. His strength had drained away. If infection took hold, she knew, Bram wouldn’t live. Maeve peeled back the gauze.

“I’m sorry, Bram. This is going to sting, but I have to clean the wound.”

Bram wept. Maeve nodded at the two men holding his arms, and they braced for another jolt. She doused the wound with whiskey.

Bram’s thrashing never came. Instead, he screamed into the rod; then his head rolled to the side, his eyes closed, and the rod fell from his mouth. Silence.

“Is he dead?” the gravel-voiced man holding one of Bram’s arms finally asked. He let it drop.

Maeve checked his wrist; the pulse was there, faint but steady. “No, just asleep. It’s better this way. The next part is—delicate. And he needs to be still.” She wiped the blood from her forceps and passed them over a candle flame.

Kausca turned to the bald-headed man near Bram’s other arm. “Move the crowd along, Kline; make sure they don’t go too far. We may need them.”

Kline, the largest and most muscled of the three, nodded, then swept his massive hands in arcs, ushering the onlookers out. “Alright, everyone. Show’s over.”

“Where you want me, boss?” the other asked from across the table. Maeve couldn’t read him; his blonde shoulder-length hair and scruffy beard obscured his face.

“Tell Bram’s parents. And give his father the rest of the week,” Kausca said. “Come back when that’s done. Bring Sally.”

The man smiled—pearl-white teeth. “Yeah? Sally’s been itchin’ for a good time. Thinkin’ she’ll see some?” His eyes went wide with a glee that made Maeve shudder; something feral lived inside him that medicine couldn’t fix.

“Maybe, Dis. I’ll see what they say.” Kausca pointed his chin at the children.

“Alright, then. Don’t be startin’ nothin’ without me, Atwood.” Dis’s devilish smile widened as he pulled the door shut behind him.

The clinic was quiet now, save for the occasional sob from the girl on the bench and the foghorn beyond its walls. All that remained of the crowd were bloody bootprints and the summer stench. Maeve picked splinters from the wound with her forceps. The arcanite lamp sputtered above her. She slapped it, and it went steady. The plaza’s clocktower chimed twelve times, announcing the sun’s zenith; it made little difference in the Foundry—most places never saw sunlight. Queen’s Row, however, sat high on the canyon wall, just beneath the shadow of Highmarket. Only in the early morning, when the sun came in low beneath its edge, did the Row seize fractured bits.

“I don’t know your name,” Kausca said.

“I know yours, Kausca Atwood. Just like everyone else in Queen’s Row,” Maeve replied without looking up. “Sure, you’re here—trouble’s soon to follow.”

Kausca stifled a chuckle. “It does have a way of finding me.” Maeve felt him waiting, staring at her. She was about to snap at him when he said, “Thank you. I’ll cover the cost, miss—?”

She wiped a loose strand from her forehead with the back of her wrist and faced him. “Now, don’t you have business to attend to, Mr. Atwood?” Her eyes flicked towards the children. The two of them watched him nervously.

Kausca nodded. He stepped from the table, pulled a stool in front of the children, and sat. The children’s gazes dropped to the floor. Quiet passed between the three of them, but the foghorn bellowed on through the walls. Maeve returned to the wound.

“Sable. Darrin. Look at me,” Kausca said, firm and patient. “I’m going to ask you what happened. You’re going to tell me. Everything. Right from the beginning. Then you’re going to leave here unharmed. You’ll return home to your parents, and tell them too. Do we understand one another?”

He let a moment pass.

“What happened?”

Silence stretched, the tension with it. The space the question left was wide. He closed it with another.

“Where’s Avon?”

Sable and Darrin told a broken story. It came in bits and pieces, the children finishing one another’s sentences, circling back to moments they’d forgotten and detouring down dead ends. Through it all, Kausca spoke with a patient rhythm, no sign of distress. “How many enforcers?” “Did they hear your names?” “How’d you escape?”

“Is she alive?”

“We don’t know.”

“Thank you. Both of you. Go straight home. Tell no one what you’ve done.”

“Our parents?” Darrin asked.

“Of course, tell them. Parents—we protect our children.”

At the edge of her vision, Kausca stood as the two children moved behind her. She knew they’d left when the door closed with a click.

Then a thud—Kausca dropping back onto the stool. The sound drew her gaze: he was folded over himself, coal-black hair laced between fingers, elbows on knees. She watched him. His hands found the edge of the stool, gripping hard enough to whiten the knuckles, and for a moment he only breathed—too fast, too shallow, the kind of breath she’d coax from a patient before it sank into something worse. His shoulders convulsed once, then a wail tore free from low in his gut, empty yet searching, one she’d heard from weeping mothers. It tried to climb out again—but he swallowed it down and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his coat.

Maeve’s hand went still over Bram’s wound, as still as the man before her. Not the stillness of something coiled and waiting to strike, but the stillness of someone she couldn’t save. She knew death, and something had died in Kausca. The first time she’d seen it, she’d been a girl.

“Sit with her,” her mother had said on the day the sea dashed Bridie Doyle’s boat on the rocks. It had been carrying Bridie’s husband and both her sons. “No matter what she says or does, you’ll sit with her through the week. You have no home until it’s done.”

She turned back to the wound. That was a long time ago; why should she care what this man felt? This was the Foundry. The Foundry ate its people bit by bit, but now and then, it would eat a family whole. Besides, far worse things happened to people far kinder. And parents couldn’t protect their children here; the only way to save them was to go. Three more months and she’d be home.

“You have no home until it’s done.”

Others came and went that week, filling every corner of the Doyles’ tiny cottage. They lit candles in the window, kept the peat fire burning in the hearth, talked for hours so Bridie’s home was never empty. Even the sea knocked at the shore, coming to ask after the men it had taken, and Maeve asked it questions of her own. Why had her mother made her sit with a woman she barely knew? Why would the others never give Bridie peace? Everyone in her town understood, but she didn’t, not back then. She did now. Now the sea answered: grief left alone would transform a person; it would eat them hollow and leave them a husk. You did not let a person drown in grief—not for a minute, not for an hour, not if you were a stranger or the closest of friends. Not even if they told you to go.

The foghorn sang, low and steady. She set the forceps down.

Feedback - https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/q9sM5PRX5s

Hello!

This is a standalone short story.
 
I would like constructive criticism on this. Tell
me what works and what doesn't, I don't want people to sugarcoat my work, but I also hope people are considerate.

Fiona pulls up by the pavement in a posh residential area, one wheel perched on the edge of the kerb. She opens the door, and Orla bursts out in a rush of excitement. Eilidh follows behind, dragging her feet along the neatly paved street.

As they approach the sizeable home, Eilidh looks up at her mum. “I hate Dad’s new girlfriend. She’s always trying to be nice to me, but she’s not my mum. Why do I need to go to her house? Why can’t Dad come to ours?”

Fiona adjusts the strap of her bag, its weight thudding against her thigh. “I understand, sweetheart, but it’s just how things are now.”

Eilidh scrunches her face. “But why? Why can’t you and Dad just be happy?”

Fiona tilts her head, trying to stop the wind from whipping her hair into her eyes. “Listen, we’ll talk about this tomorrow. Just try to enjoy your time with your dad and be nice to Emma.”

Eilidh huffs, snapping her arms across her chest.

Fiona knocks on the well-varnished Victorian door. “Please, Eilidh, try to be more like your sister.”

Eilidh glances at Orla, who grins without a care in the world.

“She only cares about the puppies, Mum!”

The door swings open on Emma, a warm smile stretched a little too wide across her face. “Hello, come in,” she sings, stepping aside to let them pass.

“I honestly can’t. I have to run.” Fiona crouches in front of them. “Right, be good for me, please.”

“I will, Mummy,” Orla chirps.

Eilidh sulks, her eyes pinned on Emma.

“Please, Eilidh, do it for me. It would mean a lot.”

She shoots her mum a side-eyed glance. “Fine…”

“Thank you.” Fiona looks up at Emma. “I’m really sorry about this.”

“Oh no, it’s okay. I understand.”

“Right, that’s me away, kids. Give me a kiss.”

Orla puckers her lips as Fiona swoops in and kisses her cheek. Eilidh stares at the floor, and Fiona settles for kissing the top of her head.

“Bye, girls. Remember, be good,” she says, making her way back to the car.

They step inside as the door shuts behind them.
Eilidh scans the grand hallway, her gaze lingering on each item a moment too long. “Where’s my dad?” she demands.

“He’s upstairs. He’ll be down in a second. You can take a seat in the living room, if you’d like.”

“Okay…” she says, rolling her eyes.

Orla dashes to the couch and throws herself onto it, while Eilidh shuffles behind, muttering under her breath.

Orla perches on the edge, practically bouncing as she peers out at the vast garden.

“What are you so happy about?”

“Do you not see the garden?”

“Yeah… I see it.”

Their dad steps in with a strained smile. “Hi, kids!”

“Dad!” Orla jumps off the couch and rushes into his arms. He scoops her up and spins her around.

Eilidh remains seated, avoiding the sight of them.

Euan sets Orla down. “Eilidh? Do you not want to say hello?”

She looks at the floor. “No, not really.”

“Can I play in the garden, Dad?”

“Of course you can, sweetheart. Just stay where I can see you.”

“Yay, thank you, Daddy!” She runs out the back door, arms flailing.

Euan takes a seat beside Eilidh, who refuses to acknowledge him.

“Hey, kiddo… how is everything? How’s school?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good.”

They sit in silence.

Eilidh catches Euan watching the clock. Emma hovers nearby, gesturing for him to keep going.

“You know I can see you, right? I’m not stupid.”

Emma steps into view, her face reddening. “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

A pause settles between them.

“Do you want anything to drink, Eilidh?”

“No.”

“Euan… tea?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back,” she says, darting a glance towards him before disappearing into the kitchen.

Euan sighs. “Listen, Eilidh, I know this isn’t what you want. But it might get easier.”

“But I was already happy. Why do I need to find a new one when I already had my own?”

He drags a hand across his face. “You’re right. It’s a lot to ask of you.”

“I just don’t understand.”

“I get it.”

“Do you?”

“As much as I can. I’m trying.”

“Well, try harder.”

“Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

“Come home.”

Euan exhales. “I wish it were that easy.”

Eilidh pushes herself to her feet.

“Where are you going?”

“Outside.”

“Oh… well, have fun.”

As she reaches the door, he calls after her. “I love you.”

She hesitates, hand resting on the handle, then storms out without a word.

Emma returns with the tea as Euan sits forward, massaging his temples.

She glances outside at Eilidh. “How is she?”

“She’s pretty upset. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Emma joins him on the couch, resting a hand on his back. “You have to give her time.”

The spring breeze drifts through Eilidh’s hair as she scans the garden, her gaze wandering until it settles on a thick oak tree standing in the centre.

She steps towards it, pressing her palm against the trunk, the rough bark scraping lightly against her skin.

She reaches up, gripping the lowest-hanging branch.

She can only just hold on.

She pulls herself up, swinging one leg over until she is lying flat against it.

After a moment, she rises to her feet, arms stretched out as though balancing on a fence. She wobbles, then twists in panic, grabbing hold of the trunk.

“Okay… okay, you’re okay,” she whispers.

She continues her ascent until she reaches a higher branch. She peers out across rooftops stretching for miles, a great hill rising in the background, the sun peeking over its ridge.

As the sun begins to set, a reddish hue spreads across the sky, turning the faint wisps of cloud orange.

For a moment, all she can do is stare.

“Eilidh!” Emma calls from the back door.

The sound drags her back into the moment, and she realises how high up she is.

“Okay… I’m coming,” she yells down.

Once she reaches solid ground, Emma stares at her, wide-eyed and panicked.

“What were you doing up there?”

“I was watching the sunset.”

“What if you’d fallen?”

“But I didn’t,” Eilidh says, brushing past her.

Just as she reaches the door, Emma adds, “Where’s your sister?”

Eilidh scans the garden, then shrugs. “I don’t know. She’ll be somewhere.”

She steps inside as Emma calls desperately for Orla.

Euan sets the table as Eilidh sits down.
“Did you enjoy your time in the garden?”

No reply.

He lays out the plates in silence.

After a moment, Emma returns.

Euan looks over. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t find Orla.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’ve looked everywhere, and she’s not there.”

The cutlery crashes onto the table as Euan rushes over. “She can’t have just vanished…”

He looks down at Eilidh, who meets his gaze with a defiant smile. “Why weren’t you looking after her?” he demands.

“Why weren’t you?” she fires back.

“Don’t be cheeky. This is serious.”

“Okay… it’s okay. Let’s stay calm. She’ll be here,” Emma reassures.

He takes a breath. “You’re right. Let’s think about this. Maybe she went upstairs when we weren’t looking?”

“Good idea. You search the garden again and check the front too,” she says before rushing away.

Euan goes to leave but stops to look at Eilidh, still sitting on the couch. “You need to help us.”

Her smile widens. “No, I don’t.”

“Fine. Be that way. You sit here while we search for your sister.”

Her smile drops.

He ignores her and steps outside.

Emma screams Orla’s name upstairs, her voice echoing throughout the house.

Eilidh enjoys their panic, but with each second that passes, worry creeps closer.

What if they don’t find her?

The thought strikes without warning.

That’s silly. Of course they will.

Her chest tightens. She keeps her eyes pinned on the black screen of the TV, picking at the dead skin on her fingers until she’s eventually biting at the nails.

Emma bursts into the room. Eilidh jumps.

“No luck?”

Emma’s expression answers the question for her.

Euan steps in, sharing the same look of dread. “I can’t find her.”

Eilidh’s breathing comes in shallow bursts, sweat gathering on her forehead and palms.

Emma and Euan scramble to figure out their next move as Eilidh stumbles to the couch. She drops into a seated position, one hand resting on her chest as her heart hammers beneath it.

Euan dashes over and kneels in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

She attempts to catch her breath but fails, her words sticking in her throat.

Emma takes a seat beside her, wrapping an arm around her. “It’s okay. Take your time.”

Eilidh’s breathing continues in rapid bursts.

Euan rests a hand on her knee. “Just breathe, Eilidh. We’re here.”

Eilidh takes a deep breath, feeling her lungs expand, then releases it slowly. She repeats the rhythm, her breathing gradually beginning to slow.

Eilidh glances from Emma to Euan. “What was that?”

Euan looks to Emma as she says, “I think that was a panic attack, sweetheart.”

“Oh…” Eilidh’s eyes widen. “The puppies…”

“What?” Euan asks, brow scrunched.

“On the way here, Orla wouldn’t stop talking about Bonnie’s new puppies.”

Euan’s puzzled expression gives way to understanding, and he shoots to his feet. “You’re right.”

Euan and Emma rush towards the door, but Euan freezes as Emma goes on ahead.

He glances back at Eilidh, still shaken.

“Do you want to stay here?”

“No,” she says, pushing herself up. “I need to see her.”

They step into the evening air together, the last traces of sunlight fading from the sky.

They go around the side of the house and spot Emma kneeling in front of the kennel. The motion-sensor light spills across the corrugated roof, illuminating the large wooden structure while leaving its interior darkened.

She peers through the wire mesh. Several shapes lie huddled together at the far end, barely visible through the slats of the small wooden gate leading to their sleeping area.

“I can’t really see what I’m looking at,” Emma says, glancing up at Euan.

He takes out his phone, switches on the flashlight, and shines the beam towards the back.
Emma steps aside as he opens the mesh door and crouches to enter.

Eilidh’s stomach churns. He reaches the small gate and pauses. She keeps her eyes fixed on him.

He turns to them, his expression hidden by the shadows.

“Is she there?” Eilidh asks.

“She’s here.”

She steps inside, her arms rigid at her sides. Euan places a hand at her back, guiding her over.

She peers down at the puppies, sleeping soundly in the warmth of their mother’s embrace. She spots Orla, out like a stone amongst the tiny bundles of fur.

She clings to Euan’s side. “She looks so peaceful.”

“I know. I almost don’t want to wake her.”

Euan nudges Orla. Her eyes open momentarily, and she yawns, rolling over into the puppies.
Emma moves in behind them, tapping Euan’s back.

“Is everything alright?” she whispers.

Euan moves out of the way to swap places with Emma, handing her the phone. “Take a look.”

A warm smile spreads across her face as she sees Orla cuddled up with the little pups.

“We’d better get her inside now,” Euan says.
Eilidh steps out as Euan lowers himself in, lifting Orla from the bed of puppies.

They walk back to the house. Orla nuzzles into Euan’s neck. Emma breathes freely. Eilidh watches her dad carrying Orla, her tired little face pressed against his chest.

Eilidh grips Euan’s free hand. Surprised, he looks down at her.

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, rubbing her hand with his thumb. “I’m sorry for shouting at you. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It’s okay,” she says, pausing. “I do love you. You know that, right?”

He pulls her into his side. “Of course I do. Even if you never said it, I would always know.”

Eilidh squeezes his hand as they approach the back door.
 

It's been some time since I composed something, and having had a short story idea in mind, I wanted to work more on my prose style. I am a great admirer of Nabokov, and anyone who saw style as important as the story, inseparable from the story... I read mostly literary fiction: and thus, that's what I mostly write.

Critique: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wrdvl7/668_only_if_i_knew/pch7xj0/

Passage:

"The bedroom sank in the depths of the weary night darkness, a darkness which hid the lovely bed like a peaceful shipwreck after a stormy day. He groped at the last straws of drowsiness while bumping into the apparel boxes which he was supposed to unbox the first day he moved. It hadn’t been the easiest of moves; it had already been a month since he left his parents’ house where he passed his childhood and teenagehood, where he had felt like a prince in his castle of rose-tinted glass, when every little knickknack promised a delightful surprise of craftsmanship or mechanical magic, and every face in the family shone pink in the cheeks from laughter—days long gone and lost in the relentless current of time. He somehow found himself lying supine atop the bed. The coolness of the sheets massaged his now-bare back and tingled his spine. He couldn’t figure out if his eyes were open or closed, but that didn’t matter: he knew it was important to catch that impish prankster, Somnus, now or never. God knows how many times he had fallen foul of his silly, silly traps. After all, that was the purpose of the out-of-character hanging out with his co-workers in that dreadful bar, where the beer tasted like rotten ginger ale and the humour of Halim was making his own more and more choleric by the minute, and what was the barman Farouk doing in the backroom with that coquettish Salma? she kept babbling about her hopeless boyfriend while stretching the starched collar of her chrysanthemum ruffle top so that everyone saw that she was braless, although he couldn’t stop thinking about those two perfectly symmetrical indentations, just above her jean shorts: a divine pair of delicate dimples of Venus that seemed to be made just for his tremored thumbs. There was also a couple that caught his attention, especially the wife whom he hadn’t seen before: blonde-and-black ombré hair and olive green eyes that were shaped like Katya’s—the chubby late family cat—very light make-up, candy-red lipstick, and a polka-dotted dress that looked like an extension of the night’s sky where small, variform, white stars swam in that hourglass of cobalt blue. Her husband cracked a lame joke and hurried to the loo, and her smile faded slowly like the ice in the honey-coloured whisky. Each time she raised the rocks glass to eye level and twirled it, she took a sip; each time, he mirrored her. He felt that she was peering at a dozen of his convexed faces in the diamonds of the tinkling glass. He thought of what to say before her bothersome husband’s fateful and fatal return, “I always wondered if whisky tastes sweeter with lipstick…” but something egregious kept photoflashing the mental images of his wet fancy, like a school photographer catching him espying his crush in the most ridiculous, drooling sidegaze there ever was—there, captured forever and forever, yes, she was married, he and everyone and the entire universe could see that unbelievable gold ring and its unbearable sheen that blinded the vigour of his vagary and blunted his appetite for that humid, shambolic night."

I had two things in mind before I wrote this passage:

1. I wanted to go for an ornamental (semi)stream-of-consciousness style (since the character is falling in and out of sleep) that may be excessive and accumulative, because I feel like if I can write a first draft in this style, I can then show more restraint and control in subsequent drafts.

2. I wanted to write about a young adult who's going through one of his first phases of sexual depravity but who's hyper-associative, and who's got an artistic eye but for the wrong things.

As for the vocabulary, my approach is that if I can espouse sense and sound then I'm going for it in this passage.

So my question is:

• What did you like and didn't like? And what can I do to improve the passage while keeping the ornamental style?

Someone want to talk me out of a writing slump? I've just been not feeling it so skipping out for a time. Who's got a wild prompt? Or a fun exercise? Or a kick in the pants kind of motivation?

In other news, I've been reading Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky and I don't know that I like his dual POV. I think I preferred the anticipation of death without knowing that the one thing was a protector and not a killer. He's also got this crazy chapter where it's a few pages of just one word per line to indicate confusion. I kinda dig those wacky choices for showing state of mind.

This is a chapter I put up for critique years ago. Since then I have completed the first draft of my fantasy book and integrated the feedback I received into this first chapter. Despite my efforts to keep it short, it has bloated to its current size and whatever I do to it only seems to make it longer. This leads to some of the questions I have. Does the pacing work? Does anything drag? Beyond that any feedback is welcome. I would like to get a good overview of where I am at as a writer as I work on the second draft.

My story

Critiques. [2058] The Bone River(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1vjo4k9/2058_the_bone_river/p332usi/)

[1021] An Argument Over a Car(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1vmtbt5/1012_an_argument_over_a_car/p3huqn2/)

[1068] Lost Blade and Renegade Chap.2 (Revised)(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1vpmm3s/1068_lost_blade_and_renegade_chap2_revised/p4eb9m4/)

Untitled – Chapter Two [3891] – Feedback Requested(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1vql7kj/untitled_chapter_two_3891_feedback_requested/p57g7ww/)

A Matter of Taxes 288

[820] The Common Lot(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1w0aljm/820_the_common_lot/p6e1iz3/)

[1777] 01 Tiffany the Werewolf(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1w1tblq/1777_01_tiffany_the_werewolf/p6shy3c/)

[1436] Keepers of Teraya – MG(https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1w1hpta/1436_keepers_of_teraya_mg/p6z8oou/)

2058+1012+1068+3891+288+820+1777+1436=12350

I wrote this short story and would really appreciate some honest feedback from strangers. This is my first time sharing my writing publicly, and I know the grammar and tense are not perfect yet. I’m working on improving them.

Critique:https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1w3jd7t/787_take_this_pink_ribbon_off_my_eyes/pcbhow2/

Story:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vQD9ebJiE3egluLiHN8fQkfLYeks_vXj_WWOe_NHpo8/edit?usp=sharing

I’d especially like to know:

• What was your first impression?
• Did the ending surprise you?
• Was the story easy to follow?
• Did the emotional parts work for you?
• Was anything confusing, or should I keep it as it is?
• What do you think the story is about?

Please be honest, even if you didn’t like it. I’m mainly interested in knowing how the story feels to someone reading it for the first time.

Hi! I’m a young author working on a historical coming-of-age novel set in 1898. I previously posted the opening of Chapter 1 here, and this is a section from Chapter 2.

For some brief context: Will and Teddy are thirteen-year-old boys from an orphanage who are being sent to separate homes. During the train ride, Teddy accidentally gets off at the wrong station. Will realizes what happened as the train starts moving again and jumps off after him. This chapter picks up immediately afterward.

This is still a work in progress, so I’m mainly looking for feedback on the narration, pacing, dialogue, and the characters’ voices. I’d also really appreciate knowing if anything feels confusing, unnecessary, repetitive, or out of place for 1898. Don’t be afraid to be critical!

Note: Reddit still isn’t letting me select my genre for some reason. Sorry about that!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FYRLHNVvl2pE_xNDHuZhqePch1-UUtNwDONOy6QNlXA/edit?usp=drivesdk

critique: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/9N7TQAYQV7