Young Writers Society

Part 1 of 2

“They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.”

- Pablo Picasso

Sara had her hands inside the bowels of the printer, like a doctor handling the heart of a surgery patient with blood-slippery fingers. The jammed cartridge was drooling gobs of ink and her palms felt warm and tacky. Like flypaper dangling from awnings on a summer afternoon.
The machine seemed to groan softly.
A surgery patient waking up.
Shedding sleep like onionskins.
Beside her, Lucas was shaking his head and fingering a stack of papers in his hand. “I can't believe we're still usin' paper and ink and crap-pigs like this. It's as if the Hierarchy is completely ignoring our department. We say we need an extra allowance and they say that 'God'll provide' and 'Be steadfast and patient'. Citizen, you got no idea how many times a week things like this happen.”
Lucas ran a hand through his hair. Flakes of dead skin fluttered around his head for a moment like gnats and Sara returned his limp looking smile; fluorescent lights sketching a tired halo around his head and shuddering at her from the basement ceiling like children watching a public execution. The air tasted like reams and reams of paper and had a thick, melted styrofoam humidity.
And the smell of ink was invading lungs.
It made her brain feel like a dead jellyfish.
“I suppose it's for the best,” she said.
“I guess. Although they need our department up and running as much as any other. There's a war going on, for God's sake! And if they want the public in the know, they gotta keep us in workin' order.”
“You're preaching the choir, Citizen.”
Lucas nodded and glanced away. “How's it look down there?”
Sara didn't respond. Gritting her teeth, she twisted the cartridge and it popped out like a wine cork.
Fresh ink gushed out as if she had torn some sort of artery, as if she had rammed a pair of scissors into the throat of a pig and washed her hands in it's blood like water from a faucet.
She offered the cartridge to Lucas with a smile.
Making a face, he shook his head and tossed her a paper towel.

***

The clouds were bruised knees. And in places the sullen gray soup opened up, revealing watered down blue scars like a burlesque queen inching up her skirt. Sara thought that the holes looked like exit wounds where dead people had punctured through on their way up to heaven.
It was cold outside.
She walked with her hands tucked in her pockets and her lower face buried in her jacket. This kept her eyes on the pavement leading to her apartment complex, whose cracks and wrinkles she had memorized like the dried-up-river-bed lines of her palms. Which were probably still stained with ink. The resistance of the stuff reminded her of engine grease.
And the ink smelled like Lucas, too.
His body odor was the scent of an office supply store.
The cold air nailed icicles through her ears like iron spikes through Christ's palms.
As soon as she got home, Sara would have to undress, take a shower, and head straight to Service, which was held in a slumped, arthritic-looking church – no time for rest. It was a twentieth century style fire-trap with pews as hard as bible covers and a cross mounted on its peak like a hood ornament. The paint on the building was all curled up and peeled and Sara was pretty sure that she could scrape off an entire side with just her fingernail. The peeled paint made the church look like it had varicose veins.
The priest was just as old.
And when he died, the church would die a little too. Rot a little more, shrivel a little more. Until it was a raisin of a building.
Lucas's question returned to mind. Why couldn't the Hierarchy increase allowances? Just a little anyway. For a new printing machine or a second coat of paint. All the pamphlets depicted the country as a breadbasket of wealth, a pot-bellied friar with cheeks like wax apples and chins that sagged like vacuum bags. That wasn't what it looked like here. To Sara, anyway. When Sara made the effort to look around, all she saw were buildings that looked like homeless men squatting on street corners with chimneys like crooked cigarettes. The expressions on the faces of the people at work and the people she passed on the street were puffy and had a mortuary corpse appearance to their skin color.
The Hierarchy was saying that when it rained, dimes and nickels and quarters rattled off of the roofs from heaven.
But Sara was nearly positive she wouldn't be able to find a dime even in the cracks of her couch cushions.
Her nose was running.
It made slug-trails on the inside of her jacket collar.
Up ahead, there was a sound of shattering glass, tinkling to the concrete like an old wind-up music box. There was shouting, too. Sara looked up and saw a man with hard, oil-shale eyes and hair that looked as if he had greased it with petroleum jelly struggling with two police men, screaming curses and every so often dissolving into French like a pentecostal speaking in tongues. He spat words and kicked his legs and lashed out with his elbows at the faces of the officers.
His face was feral.
“You bastards! You're all bastards! Can't you see yourselves? Have you looked in the mirror recently? Mon dieu, you're all a bunch of whores for the Hierarchy! Mindless whores!”
One of the police officers swore and punched the Frenchman in the face. His head clacked against the wall like dice rolling across marble floors. The man slumped. Now he looked like one of the surrounding buildings.
The police hooked their hands around his arms and dragged away, along the pavement.
His head lolled.
Sara hadn't realized she had stopped to watch the ordeal. Her nose and mouth were dentist-chair numb and she had to work them – massage them – back to life like new modeling clay. Rubbing her hands together, too, Sara glanced at the shop window the man had shattered and beside it in massive, lazy, slurring cursive letters was a sentence in French.
Ce temp est une invention des gens incapable d'aimer.
This time is an invention of people incapable of love.
Of love.
Already, the police officers were back, this time with a can of white paint and two brushes. Quickly, wordlessly, they began erasing the statement like the nub of a pencil squeaking across a piece of lined paper. They baptized the wall faithfully.
Sara knew – everyone on the street who had been watching knew – that the Frenchman had just spent his life on an idea. An idea that was like a soap bubble. It had the lifespan of a puff of breath or an old man lying in a hospital with his lungs filling up with water.
Plop.
That was the sound his head would make when it hit the ground.
Sara shuddered and kept walking.

Part 2 of 2

Sara was sitting at the desk in her basement, a scrap of paper torn from a propaganda pamphlet lying in front of her. She was biting her lip and tapping frantic Morse code on the edge of the desk with a pen. Written on the slip of paper was a single statement:
This time is an invention of people incapable of love.
It was printed neatly, words strung together like graffiti-sprayed boxcars, and the letters were crouched rebelliously.
Spiderwebs strung up like little Cat's Cradles between invisible fingers in the ceiling corners were as still as veils draped over the faces of a corpses, even though at the moment Sara felt that her breathing was so heavy it could bend palm trees like coat-hangar wires. She wondered again what had compelled her to write the statement down, to carefully spell out her own suicide like the Frenchman with his head plopping onto the streets once it was removed from his neck.
She wondered how her head would sound when it hit the street side.
She wondered how long it would take for her retinas to stop picking up little shards of light as her brain began slowing down, neurons popping off and on and off again like frazzled spark plugs.
Half of her sopped up the wonderful quiet rebellion of the written statement, while the other half of her screamed for her fingers to tear the incriminating piece of paper into a million little spits of idealism and then burn them one by one, so that they erupted like stars shuffling their way out of supernova cocoons.
Sara could only see the stars if she was at least ten miles from a city.
Streetlights were like smokestacks.
They smudged out starlight like a thumb smashing ants.
She wondered if, after she had her head decapitated by the Hierarchy, if God would let her sit with the stars for a while and watch the Solar System Ballet Troupe make pirouettes around the sun.
Probably not. Sara was pretty sure God was on the Hierarchy's side. She was pretty sure that Satan would use this little piece of paper – written on it: her eulogy – to kindle the fire that would constantly be melting the skin off of her feet once she was punted down to Hell by an indignant Lord of Hosts.
Now she was holding the pen with both hands, bending it as she stared at her feet.
No one really knew what the Hierarchy did with thought criminals. Sara just liked to think that their heads were cut off. It was an image of revolutionary France and guillotines and baskets filled with straw catching heads like baseballs and common citizens wrapping themselves in their country's flag like pinched-mouth black widows mummifying flies in spider silk. It was a romantic image. It was exciting. The guillotine probably cut a stunning figure standing their in city squares, cradling victims like a nursing mother, dressing herself in summer dresses of blood, slender and humble.
The blade would go:
Schlip!
Her head would go:
Plop!
Just like the Frenchman's once they found her slip of paper.
Trembling, cinching her eyes shut, Sara tightened her grip on her pen.
And it snapped.
Ink lactated from the pen and spattered the paper on her desk in black Rorschach figure-blobs. It also threw up all over her fingertips and chin; flecking them like a Catholic priest would baptize a newborn child. She swore and threw the husk of the pen as hard as she could at the opposite wall.
Once again, she had ink all over her hands.
The smell tickled the inside of her nose like a burning feather duster.
Sara bit her lip and closed her eyes and was careful to keep her shoe-polish black fingertips away from the desk and her clothing. She tried not to cry. She tried to remain absolutely silent and dissolve for a moment out of her body, out of the basement, out of the city; to float heavenward like a dead fish belly-up in a fishbowl. Choking as unborn sobs clotted her throat, Sara tried to remain in control.
Like a tea-kettle whistle, a gasp escaped from between her teeth.
Sara clenched her fists.
She opened her eyes.
Before her, the blobs of ink on the scrap of paper were gargoyles hunched on the ledge of a Gothic cathedral. They looked like little bits and pieces of her mood torn out of her chest and then laid like pressed-page blossoms before her. They looked like a dance troupe of black women contorted in two dimensions.
And above the blobs of ink:
This time is an invention of those incapable of love.
Her teeth were making spider-bite nicks in her lip, she was biting it so hard. Slowly, Sara dipped her finger in a glistening, syrupy inkstain and made a smaller dab next to it. And then another. And another. Until the hunched black dancer – an ultrasound fetus – was surrounded by little ink dots. Little children.
Little stars.
Stars that had been pinched out by the fingers of the Hierarchy.
She realized suddenly what she was doing.
She was drawing.
This was art.
The dancers on the paper stared up at her with anarchical smiles, fashioned so sloppily that they could have been scribbled by a child. To someone else – to anyone else – the pictures looked as if a butchered squid had bled them out, coughed them out. But to Sara, they hid little spore seeds of hate and rebellion and tiny bits and pieces of free thought. Spattered on the paper, was the blood of the Frenchman. As black as the wrinkled raisin souls of the Hierarchy priests.
Sara folded the scrap into fourths and slipped it down her blouse.
And against her chest, black dancers squirmed.

Ooh, very interesting. I like the post-apocalyptic feel to it. The quote at the beginning was just haunting. Picasso was a little morbid.

Omigosh, do you have a lot of similes in there. All of those things are "like" this and "like" that. Some of them were amazing, but there were just so many of them. In the end, they kind of overshadow your work and it gets kind of wordy, so that the character and the events get lost. Sometimes less is more in writing.

Tell us what things are, not just what they are like.

Your characters look like they could be really interesting, but I want to see more of them and how they react to things. I'm not quite sure how your MC feels about this world order that she lives under. She's tired, but I'm not sure if she's trying to be optimistic or what. Take us into her head, let us see how she reacts to things. When she saw the Frenchman get beaten, she just stopped to look. This could tell us a lot about her character. Does she want to help him? Does she feel sorry for him? Did she think that he was getting what was coming to him? She shudders, but why? There are many reasons to shudder: disgust, fear... Give us a little more concrete detail.

Anyway, this looks like an interesting beginning. The setting, if nothing else, draws me in. I want to know more. Guess I'll have to read the next part.

*thumbs up* Keep on truckin'!

~GryphonFledgling

Oh, I see what you're doing here you sneaky bugger. And I love it! Wonderful idea. I wish I could give this two stars, but site set-up and all that. ^_^

Sara had her hands inside the bowels of the printer, like a doctor handling the heart of a surgery patient with blood-slippery fingers. The jammed cartridge was drooling gobs of ink and her palms felt warm and tacky. Like flypaper dangling from awnings on a summer afternoon.

Gah, best imagery everrr. One suggestion though: You have two similes in this small paragraph. Try turning one into a metaphor, because it kind of dampers down the piece to see: "like a, like a, like".

Lucas ran a hand through his hair. Flakes of dead skin fluttered around his head for a moment like gnats and Sara returned his limp looking smile; fluorescent lights sketching a tired halo around his head and shuddering at her from the basement ceiling like children watching a public execution. The air tasted like reams and reams of paper and had a thick, melted styrofoam humidity

Same thing here. You have lovely comparisons, beautiful, but you're still simile-happy.

“You're preaching the choir, Citizen.”

"Preaching TO the choir"

The clouds were bruised knees. And in places the sullen gray soup opened up, revealing watered down blue scars like a burlesque queen inching up her skirt. Sara thought that the holes looked like exit wounds where dead people had punctured through on their way up to heaven.

This paragraph is a little too abstract and confusing. I think you just need to add some words to de-fuddle it, like "Sara thought that the holes IN THE SKY looked like exit wounds", to give the thoughts a more concrete feel.

Sara glanced at the shop window the man had shattered and beside it in massive, lazy, slurring cursive letters was a sentence in French.

What exactly is this French written on...?

that the Frenchman had just spent his life on an idea

Wow! I love this.

This is another amazing story. You have a talent for comparisons in writing, but you overuse it - the imagery is beautiful, but this contained way too many similes. You need to rewrite some of these sentences so that they're metaphors instead or maybe incorporate them differently into the storyline somehow. You're the writer and can model it as you please.

And I agree with Gryphon on the character's as well. I knew your previous character - in a Siren's Voicebox, better than this one. You need to introduce some more facts about her.

Still amazing! Thanks for the read, and PM when the next one comes out too.

~ Clo

Hey Kylan,

Well I can't say that I liked this better than the first one but this was amazing nonetheless. You're descriptions and your poetic voice are truly amazing, as I say all the time, but I feel like I need to know a little bit more about Sarah and Lucas. Other than that, I saw nothing wrong with this piece.
Favorite lines:

Sara had her hands inside the bowels of the printer, like a doctor handling the heart of a surgery patient with blood-slippery fingers. The jammed cartridge was drooling gobs of ink and her palms felt warm and tacky. Like flypaper dangling from awnings on a summer afternoon.

This was beautifully written and it was almost as if you were looking at a painting and desve cribing what was there. I don't have a lot of time left to say anything more but I will say that this is a very interesting story and that I will be looking forward to more. Also, maybe as it was said before me, turn the similes into metaphors well some of them I mean.
Fantastic Job!!
Angel

A bit of dystopian satire, isn't this? Not that I mind, it is very well done. My first question is how does this connect to A Siren's Voicebox? I did read that story, and I can see how the Hierarchy that you set up here might be behind the events in that story. But why persecute artists? Just a personal question really, going into the history of the universe you created I guess.

Oh, well, now here we go. Your main character is very interesting. I noticed she pays a lot of attention to the details. This is very interesting to me, and I like it a lot. Will it play into the story at any point, perhaps to drive the plot forward? Just another useless question, but you might look into using things like that in just such a manner. Using things for multiple purposes like this makes for stories that are more closely linked together.

Next, the character of Lucas. Perhaps he will figure into the plot at a later date, but here even now you need to involve him a little better perhaps. You might consider expounding on his character in the very least. That will endear us readers to him, and if you do plan on using Lucas later this is a very good thing.

Emotionless policemen, well, minus a swear or two. While this might be the perfect henchman for a fascist government, it might not be all that plausible. You can tell someone to be emotionless and cold, but they will not follow it one hundred percent of the time. Especially in a society where those who speak out are in a lot of danger. Even if they don't say anything but those few swears, there are other ways to show a bit of personality in them. Motions, actions, those things are also what give a person form and substance. And, on a side note, even if one were to go through some kind of program that took the emotion out of them, that would give them a very different method of action than what they act like in the story.

These are the only things that really reach out at me. I look forward to the next installment, mostly because the universe you have set up is very interesting. PM me when you post it, please.

Hello all!

I just posted the remaining portion of Fingerpaint in the original thread entry under [part 2 of 2]. I hope you enjoy!

Also,

Conrad >> Actually, it's not a satire at all. I don't know what gave you that impression, unless you and I have different definitions of the word satire. Lucas will not show up again, but just as a spoiler for part 3 of the Siren series, Samuel does show up again.

Angel, Clograbby, and Gryph >> Thanks for the simile into metaphor tip, something I will definately look into. Generally, I tend to overwrite in my first drafts which means lots of fat and cholestral in my stories. I'll go back over this once it's finished and scratch out the less meaningful similes and turn a few into metaphors.

-Kylan

Hello, stopping by for part II.

I feel bad, not realizing that this was a sequel to something else. I thought perhaps there could be a relationship, since the titles of both involve sirens, but I wasn't sure. *sigh* Now I feel stupid. I've done that with print books too. It happens when you don't read the description (online - but YWS doesn't show the summary thing on the front page) or examine the cover hard enough (all of those people who design covers on which the series number is not clear should all be shot). 'K, ranting done.

I loved the continuation of using bodily imagery for the ink. You turn it into a living organism, first with surgery in the part one, and then here turning it into vomit as it spews out of the pen. Very very nice continuity. You are extremely skilled at imagery.

Again, you did the simile thing, though part two wasn't nearly as laden with them as part one.

As of this moment, I'm not entirely sure why art should be considered a crime, but perhaps it is because I haven't read all of the material on this world you have created. I'm going to go and read "Voicebox" and see if it makes any more sense by the end.

This was a great piece of work in any case. You write fantastic imagery that blows the mind, it's just a bit too heavy on the similes. But you do mention that this kind of thing happens in first drafts (which I understand - I do the exact same thing and always end up trimming), so I won't go all preachy again.

Amazing work. *thumbs up*

Keep up the writing!

~GryphonFledgling

*cries*

Kylan this is a great improvement! Your descriptions and the feel of the whole story is just truly magnificent. What I like about your writing is that you don't make the same mistakes twice which is good. Also, getting back to the topic, I really like how you made the antagonist obvious in a world where freedom of speech, art, and basically self-expression is forbidden. Like many people chained by words and laws of others, there is always one person who grabs the butter and gnaws their foot off just to get one simple message across that can mean everything to anyone...in this case its Sara.
As always, I picked my favorite line:

She wondered if, after she had her head decapitated by the Hierarchy, if God would let her sit with the stars for a while and watch the Solar System Ballet Troupe make pirouettes around the sun.

When I read this, I knew that it had to become my favorite part in the whole story. Well its kinda tied with the ending part where Sara starts finger painting but this was so beautifully painted that I couldn't just leave it hanging amongst the rest of the words.
Kylan I have no advice for you this time but I guess I should advise you to keep writing, this is a great story and I really find myself intrigued with the Frenchman's last words:
This time is an invention of those incapable of love.
So keep writing and I'm looking forward to the next part,
Angel

Woohoo, more. I didn't know there was going to be a second part, and now I think this gives it the opportunity to stand up to the power of the first one.

And, since I didn't mention this before, I will now: the Picasso quote fits with this perfectly, and I love the quote in particular.

Spiderwebs strung up like little Cat's Cradles between invisible fingers in the ceiling corners were as still as veils draped over the faces of a corpses

Amazing description, but this is an example of a simile than would sound better as a metaphor. Rephrase it like this. "Spiderwebs strung up in the ceiling corners were little Cat's Cradles between invisible fingers, still as veils draped over the faces of a corpses."

It also threw up all over her fingertips and chin; flecking them like a Catholic priest would baptize a newborn child.

The simile here isn't even necessary. It just makes the segment wordy.

I didn't catch any grammar things - this was a marvelous piece. You still have a problem with overabundant similes, but it's better here. You need to keep it in mind as your write further. Don't nix them entirely - I mean, your comparisons are lovely. It's just overwhelming for a reader to come across so many, so quickly. The overabundance of any literary element I suppose would be ill for the reader. You need variety in the writing style - don't rely on one thing that you're get at. Mix it up, try different techniques.

Still very very good. I really got into the MC's head here, and it made what happened to the Frenchman that much more real.

PM me with questions!

~ Clo

Reviewing part two now.

For the record, I always thought works like this were dystopian satire. I see I have homework to do.

I have to bring up one thing that just really jumped at me.

Ink lactated from the pen and spattered the paper on her desk in black Rorschach figure-blobs.

I didn't know that ink lactated from a pen. If you want to keep it go ahead. I'm not saying that's an error, I just thought it was really funny.

I liked how Sara wrote out what the Frenchman said on a propaganda pamphlet that probably supported the Hierarchy. You might consider drawing comparisons between truth and falsehood here, but it is an interesting thing as it is.

Another bit of how does this world work questioning. When Sara talks about how she thinks of the way that dissenters are killed, she mentions the French Revolution and how the imagery of that time period is romantic. How would they know this much if the Hierarchy has suppressed things like art? Romanticism is very much an artistic thing, so it stands to reason that they would have made attempts to portray such things as violent and shameful, or something like that. But has Sara heard old stories, whispers of what was? Just curious. Making sure your world works in all these little ways is tough, but in the end it makes it stronger and more believeable.

That's all I have to pick at as far as part two is concerned. I'm happy to learn that there is a part three, and that we have a face from another story popping in. I really like how this world is turning out, what with the Hierarchy and thought criminals. Be sure to PM me once part three rolls out. And you might consider making another post for part three. I don't know if I'll get a review point for this helpful tidbit. I know, I know, selfish little me.

But anyways, good work, and keep it up.

Hey there, darling! I realize this comes a little later than you might have hoped, and I’m sorry it took me so long. I hope you won’t mind if I accidentally repeat something another editor has pointed out—just know that I love your work and I really do want to help. Okay, here we go:

“They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better.”

Once again, a beautiful opening quote.

Sara had her hands inside the bowels of the printer, like a doctor handling the heart of a surgery patient with blood-slippery fingers.

A beautiful word-image (as has become typical for you ), but a bit confusing on the wording—the way you’ve got them ordered, it sounds as if it’s the surgery patient who has the blood-slippery fingers.

The machine seemed to groan softly.

Machines actually can groan, you know. So maybe nix the “seemed to”?

A surgery patient waking up.

Shedding sleep like onionskins.

First sentence: awesome continuation of your earlier image.
Second sentence: my train of thought is seriously derailed as I start to think “What the heck do onionskins have to do with anything?” I think you change metaphors too quickly there, besides which I now have the image stuck in my head of a machine shedding onionskins. In a nutshell: please nix the second sentence.

Flakes of dead skin fluttered around his head for a moment like gnats and Sara returned his limp looking smile; fluorescent lights sketching a tired halo around his head and shuddering at her from the basement ceiling like children watching a public execution.

1) Fantastic imagery. How often can I saw that before you get tired of hearing it?
2) I think it’s supposed to be “limp-looking” with the dash.
3) The sentence is a bit long—that semicolon is straining under the weight. Why not just go ahead and give those two pieces of loverly metaphor their own sentences?

The air tasted like reams and reams of paper and had a thick, melted styrofoam humidity.

You of all people do not need so many adjectives to modify just the one word, trust me. I’m sure you can manage without a couple of them, or better yet, move one or two! “The thick air tasted like reams and reams of paper, the humidity like melted styrofoam.” Something like that?

And the smell of ink was invading lungs.

It made her brain feel like a dead jellyfish.

1) Who’s lungs? I’m sure we can guess, but still, the imprecise language is annoying.
2) Again with the second-sentence randomness! Now in my mental picture there’s a jellyfish in the basement, leaking out of her ears, and it’s all your fault. Seriously, though, lose the jellyfish, lose the onionskins, and let those characteristic, short sentences stand alone—they deliver much more punch that way.

Fresh ink gushed out as if she had torn some sort of artery, as if she had rammed a pair of scissors into the throat of a pig and washed her hands in it's blood like water from a faucet.

Once more, beautiful continuation of the surgery metaphor, but the pig reference threw me (not as much as the onionskins and jellyfish, though). Couldn’t the whole scissors/throat/faucet thing work with the artery you mentioned before, or make it a surgery patient again instead of a pig? I really like the relationship between Sara and the machine that you’ve established with the surgeon/patient thing, don’t go (*horrible pun alert*) hog wild here. Besides which, and this just occurred to me, the parallel between surgeons and artists is one that really works.

The clouds were bruised knees. And in places the sullen gray soup opened up, revealing watered down blue scars like a burlesque queen inching up her skirt.

Very good—this is the kind of place to develop a new metaphor, I just wanted to point out a place where you avoided onionskin/jellyfish unpleasantness. Oh, also, methinks it’s “watered-down.” Or maybe I’m just dash-crazy. One of those.

Sara thought that the holes looked like exit wounds where dead people had punctured through on their way up to heaven.

Hehe…I really like the way she thinks.

It was cold outside.

Nonononono. No. No. NO. You, my darling, do not make simple, declarative sentences like this. I shan’t allow it. I simply shan’t allow it. No reference to how the cold was like that of a crypt? (continuing on the dead-people thread here, just a suggestion) No beautiful words about how the chill brought the blood to her cheeks or turned her ink-stained hands red-and-black? No imagery of her breath steaming in the air like the clouds themselves! I. Shan’t. Allow. It. You obviously don’t have to use all or even any of my suggestions. But please. I beg of you. Do not leave that horrible thing just sitting there, all average and sad. [/rant]

This kept her eyes on the pavement leading to her apartment complex, whose cracks and wrinkles she had memorized like the dried-up-river-bed lines of her palms.

Once more, wonderful imagery but confusing word-order—the apartment complex has cracks and wrinkles?

The resistance of the stuff reminded her of engine grease.

And the ink smelled like Lucas, too.

His body odor was the scent of an office supply store.

The cold air nailed icicles through her ears like iron spikes through Christ's palms.

Hmmm…
Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to do an onionskin/jellyfish rant here, these sentences don’t warrant it. It’s just…I like the references to Lucas and his scent, and I especially like the icicles/iron spikes/Christ’s palms reference (see, I told you that horrible “It was cold outside.” sentence was beneath you). At the moment, it’s mostly the engine grease that seems to come out of left field, especially because it’s her doing the comparison this time, not you. Besides which, that’s a lot of short, isolated sentences in a row. Perhaps re-think your word choices?

As soon as she got home, Sara would have to undress, take a shower, and head straight to Service, which was held in a slumped, arthritic-looking church – no time for rest.

I’d nix the ‘no time for rest’ bit—that much is obvious from what you tell us of her near future. As for the rest, oh, I don’t know. Verbs like “would have to,” “take,” and “head straight to” all sound a little…well, dull for you. I realize you can’t always be ethereal and such, but perhaps a little bit of spice here would be good?

It was a twentieth century style fire-trap with pews as hard as bible covers and a cross mounted on its peak like a hood ornament.

*points* There, you see—just the kind of spice I meant.

The paint on the building was all curled up and peeled and Sara was pretty sure that she could scrape off an entire side with just her fingernail. The peeled paint made the church look like it had varicose veins.

You could very nearly nix that entire first sentence—the second is cooler and makes it redundant anyway. I’d keep the bit about scraping off an entire side with her fingernail, but that’s all I’d keep.

Rot a little more, shrivel a little more.

The double “a little more” just feels a redundant—are there no synonyms we can use? “Rot a little more, and shrivel in on itself.” Something like that…

For a new printing machine or a second coat of paint.

Wait, was she fixing the church’s printing machine? If not, you might want to make that a bit more clear.

The expressions on the faces of the people at work and the people she passed on the street were puffy and had a mortuary corpse appearance to their skin color.

Why puffy? Oh, and please nix “mortuary,” tis redundant. Or…I guess you could nix “corpse.” But I like “corpse-like” better than “mortuary.”

The Hierarchy was saying that when it rained, dimes and nickels and quarters rattled off of the roofs from heaven.

Litterally?

The Hierarchy was saying that when it rained, dimes and nickels and quarters rattled off of the roofs from heaven.

But Sara was nearly positive she wouldn't be able to find a dime even in the cracks of her couch cushions.

Her nose was running.

It made slug-trails on the inside of her jacket collar.

Once again, you have several (relatively) short sentences all close together. The last two work as they are, but perhaps combine the first two?

dissolving into French like a pentecostal speaking in tongues.

I think “pentecostal” is meant to be capitalized.

Rubbing her hands together, too, Sara glanced at the shop window

Nix the “too” please—unnecessary.

Ce temp est une invention des gens incapable d'aimer.

This time is an invention of people incapable of love.

Beautiful.


Overall

Another fantastic piece, love, though distinct from your first one. With “Voicebox,” there was more a sense of urgency, of a man soaking up the last instants of life. Here you’ve chosen to build the action more slowly, which is not at all a bad thing. I’m merely pointing out differences. One thing that did strike me, something that changed the overall flavor of the piece as I was reading—in “Voicebox” you began with imagery, and elegantly set the stage for an ethereal, un-earthly read that was truly unique. Here, you began with a character, which roots your story more firmly in ways that we as readers are familiar with. Again, this is not a bad thing, I’m merely pointing out differences. Although, I must admit, I missed Richard and the streaming, heavenly light of his introduction. If you like, perhaps you could experiment with starting this piece with similar imagery, only based on the ink rather than light. You do that a little bit already, and this is only a suggestion. Thanks again for a lovely read, and please do let me know when the next installment is up!

Here we go, Part Two!

Sara was sitting at the desk in her basement

Should be ‘sat,’ methinks…scanning just the first few paragraphs, you might want to make it clearer what your tense is, as you start out in a sort of quasi-present tense, then move on to solid past-tense (which, I think, is what you had before).

She was biting her lip and tapping frantic Morse code on the edge of the desk with a pen.

See above.

words strung together like graffiti-sprayed boxcars, and the letters were crouched rebelliously

It almost seems as if you’re giving the words and the letters two different metaphors, which is a bit confusing. I had an image of the words as boxcars, and then my mental picture had to take a leap sideways so see the letters crouched rebelliously. Perhaps make the rebelliously crouched (is it possible to crouch rebelliously?) letters a part of the boxcar image, i.e. “the letters crouched within them like rebellious boxcar-living bums.” :p Obviously not that, but you get the idea?

Morse code
/
little Cat's Cradles

Okay, yes, so I know they’re supposed to be capitalized. But you didn’t capitalize Styrofoam in the last part, and the not-capitalizing worked better for you, I think. Makes it just a generic word, and distracts from the flow slightly less. Of course, it’s also a good idea to stick to proper grammar, I just thought I’d put in my two cents on the capitalization thing.

over the faces of a corpses

0.o Nix the ‘a’ if you want to make this plural (I wouldn’t, btw). Also, I have a personal pet-peeve about saying ‘of something’ when you can just say ‘something’s.’ I.e. “over a corpse’s face” or such. Maybe see how you like it.

even though at the moment Sara felt that her breathing was so heavy it could bend palm trees like coat-hangar wires.

You ask me, I’d just totally nix everything in red and make the rest a separate sentence—what does Sara’s heavy breathing have to do with the cobweb/corpse image? (the words “even though” imply that they are connected…somehow)

She wondered again what had compelled her to write the statement down, to carefully spell out her own suicide like the Frenchman with his head plopping onto the streets once it was removed from his neck.

0.0 Hang on, did we actually see the Frenchman beheaded? It was under the impression they just roughed him up and carted him off, to be quietly inhumed elsewhere. Also, when you originally mentioned the propaganda leaflet, I assumed it was something of the Frenchman’s (or such), something with that phrase already printed on it, not something she’d written the phrase on herself. You see?

Half of her sopped up the wonderful quiet rebellion of the written statement, while the other half of her screamed for her fingers to tear the incriminating piece of paper into a million little spits of idealism and then burn them one by one, so that they erupted like stars shuffling their way out of supernova cocoons.

*relief* There’s the Kylan I know and love. You get off to a rather jerky start this section, darling, but this sentence/paragraph is very reassuring (read: poetic and smooth).

Sara could only see the stars if she was at least ten miles from a city.

Streetlights were like smokestacks.

They smudged out starlight like a thumb smashing ants.

Erg. Again, formatting could be your friend here—combining the last two sentences would make “Streetlights were like smokestacks” a little less of a mental shift. “Streetlights were like smokestacks, smudging out starlight like a thumb smashing ants.” You see? Then I don’t have to shift away from thinking about the stars, and then back again. (that middle sentence made me think we were headed into talking about the city itself)

She wondered if, after she had her head decapitated by the Hierarchy, if God would let her sit

Nix the second “if” please. Oh, and your head is the only part of you that can be decapitated, so either “after she had her head removed” or “after she had been decapitated.”

the Solar System Ballet Troupe make pirouettes around the sun.

Again with the uncertain capitalization. Twere it me, I think “the solar system’s ballet troupe” would work fine.

paper – written on it: her eulogy – to kindle

Why not just “—her eulogy written on it—”? Just feels that you’re being unnecessarily fancy with the formatting.

did with thought criminals. Sara just liked to think that their heads were cut off.

Eh, it’s not a big deal, but those two so close together is just a tad grating. Perhaps “Sara just like to imagine/hope/whathaveyou”.

It was a romantic image. It was exciting. The guillotine probably cut a stunning figure standing their in city squares, cradling victims like a nursing mother, dressing herself in summer dresses of blood, slender and humble.

Perhaps it’s just me, but you’ve been sooo good about showing and not telling that I get annoyed whenever you do even the tiniest bit of telling. I don’t think you really need the two sentences in red. It’s not that they ruin anything, or are out of place at all, or detract whatsoever. But you do such a good job of showing us that it’s a romantic, exciting image that it seems beneath you to tell us it’s a romantic, exciting image.

Just like the Frenchman's once they found her slip of paper.

Again: confused. I thought you said he was already decapitated! At least, you referred to the sound his detached head made in the past tense, so this coming in the future tense is rather confusing. Besides which, I think Mr. Frenchamn’s head is for the straw-filled baskets with or without her slip of paper.

Ink lactated from the pen

*embarrassment* Wow, this almost never happens to me: what does “lactated” mean?

The smell tickled the inside of her nose like a burning feather duster.

Awesomeness.

Sara bit her lip and closed her eyes and was careful to keep her shoe-polish black fingertips away from the desk and her clothing.

I think I understand the parallelism you wish to accomplish with all those “and”s, but in this case, they’re just distracting.

Her teeth were making spider-bite nicks in her lip, she was biting it so hard.

Nix it—you already show us that she’s biting so hard.

Spattered on the paper, was the blood of the Frenchman.

Nix the comma.


[b]Overall[/i]

Well, this is perhaps not my favorite installment, but I think if you smooth out the beginning (you end it beautifully!) then Fingerpaint might begin to approach the standard of brilliance you showed in Voicebox. Seriously, that one will probably always be my favorite, but I really did love this one—you gave us a lot more connection to your world here, which is great, and used a few more characters, which really worked here. Thanks again for a thoroughly enjoyable read!

Kylan!

Ohhh, my goodness. You did not just make an amazing symbol--there's blood on her hands = there's ink on her hands. Good God. Stop being brilliant, I beg of you. I wish I could find a way to quote it and spread it around, but it's never said expressly, which just makes it a lot cooler. You're a lot more subtle here than you ever have been, and it's really quite effective. Not bad for a first try. ^_~

THE OVERACHIEVER

When you're writing, don't ever be afraid of simplicity. Your writing, though beautiful, tends to be overly complex. There are a lot of crazy images going on all at once--you have to think of the occasional "folk tune" of a sentence. Think about it. "Amazing Grace" still makes people cry in church, but they won't have the same emotional attachment to a piece in a weird time signature written entirely in gracenotes and trills. It's cool to listen to, yes, but it's not Little Black Dress--it's beautiful, but it's not simple.

The most poetic, achingly beautiful book I've ever read--Everything is Illuminated, by Johnathan Safran Foer-- has a paragraph that goes like this:

And she was loved for it. Loved by everyone, even those who hated her. The curious circumstances of her creation it the men's intrigue, but it was her clever manipulations, her coy gestures and pivots of phrase, her refusal to acknowledge or ignore their existence that made them follow her through the streets, gaze at her from their windows, dream of her--not their wives, not even themselves--at night.

Sometimes, you need simplicity to make a point. Against a poetic/experimental setting, it really sticks out and calls attention to whatever you're trying to get across. The starkness of a simple line--"She was loved for it"--creates a rhythm in this paragraph that makes for smooth and wonderful reading.

A RECKONING

I wonder--how does the Hierarchy, which is obsessed with sin, make no qualms about killing people who appear, to us, "innocent"? It's one of those things that also needs some explanation, which will create a little more balance. Even random acts of violence need to be justified. Otherwise, why waste the effort setting up a guillotine if it's not going to accomplish anything?

__

I absolutely. Adore. This. Piece. Just saying. ^_~

Sara had her hands inside the bowels of the printer, like a doctor handling the heart of a surgery patient with blood-slippery fingers.

Fantastic image, but this is perhaps a little too long for an opening sentence. It’s the “blood-slippery fingers” that do it. Perhaps you could take that phrase out? It could be just a personal thing though, so if you really want to, you could keep it.

We say we need an extra allowance and they say that 'God'll provide' and 'Be steadfast and patient'. Citizen, you got no idea how many times a week things like this happen.”

I’d change this to, … and they say ‘God will provide’ and ‘be steadfast and patient.’ It flows a bit better this way, sa?

Flakes of dead skin fluttered around his head for a moment like gnats and Sara returned his limp looking smile; fluorescent lights sketching a tired halo around his head and shuddering at her from the basement ceiling like children watching a public execution.

I think this might be better as two sentences.

The bit in bold would be better as, Flakes of dead skin fluttered like gnats around his head and Sara returned his limp looking smile… Though does that need to be “limp looking”? Why not just “limp”?

The air tasted like reams and reams of paper and had a thick, melted styrofoam humidity.
And the smell of ink was invading lungs.

Putting these two sentences together gives the next one greater impact. Long, then short. The “reams and reams” is a bit unnecessary, I think, and the ending drags the whole sentence down a little. Perhaps something like, The air tasted like paper, with a thick, melted styrofoam humidity. I can’t work out how to incorporate the second sentence in, but the word order there is weird. “Was invading lungs”?

It made her brain feel like a dead jellyfish.

Because this sentence is short and sweet, the previous sentences do need to fixed to do this one justice.

Fresh ink gushed out as if she had torn some sort of artery, as if she had rammed a pair of scissors into the throat of a pig and washed her hands in it's blood like water from a faucet.

I’d reword this as, Fresh ink gushed out as though she had torn some sort of artery, as is she had rammed a pair of scissors into a pig’s throat and washed her hands in its blood … and that still doesn’t quite fit. I think perhaps you’ve got too much imagery in here. You’re trying to cram too much in. You’ve got three images - the torn artery, the pig’s throat and the water from a faucet. It would be better if you just stayed with the torn artery picture that you started in the beginning and left out the pig and the faucet.

The clouds were bruised knees. And in places the sullen gray soup opened up, revealing watered down blue scars like a burlesque queen inching up her skirt.

You could combine these two sentences and then you’d get rid of the second one beginning with “and”.

She walked with her hands tucked in her pockets and her lower face buried in her jacket.

“Chin” might be better instead of “lower face”.

This kept her eyes on the pavement leading to her apartment complex, whose cracks and wrinkles she had memorized like the dried-up-river-bed lines of her palms. Which were probably still stained with ink.

Ehh, this is choppy.

And the ink smelled like Lucas, too.

And the ink smelled like Lucas, as well, and that isn’t perfect.

The cold air nailed icicles through her ears like iron spikes through Christ's palms.
As soon as she got home, Sara would have to undress, take a shower, and head straight to Service, which was held in a slumped, arthritic-looking church – no time for rest.

You started off with this very solemn image - the nails in Christ’s palms, and then you went straight into “as soon as she got home” which completely destroyed it. Expand on the nail image of take it out.

The priest was just as old.
And when he died, the church would die a little too. Rot a little more, shrivel a little more. Until it was a raisin of a building.

Wonderful raisin image, but the sentence structure here - it’s very staccato. Staccato is good in little pieces, but a whole paragraph full of these sentences is too much.

Lucas's question returned to mind.

To her mind.

Her nose was running.
It made slug-trails on the inside of her jacket collar.

I think you can get away with the staccato here.

He spat words and kicked his legs and lashed out with his elbows at the faces of the officers.

Is this passive voice? Either way, it sounds better direct. Eric Idle and Facebook both do it, but it would still be better as the officers’ faces.

Rubbing her hands together, too, Sara glanced at the shop window the man had shattered and beside it in massive, lazy, slurring cursive letters was a sentence in French.

I’d take this out.

It was printed neatly, words strung together like graffiti-sprayed boxcars, and the letters were crouched rebelliously.

To me, these seem at odds with each other.

Spiderwebs strung up like little Cat's Cradles between invisible fingers in the ceiling corners were as still as veils draped over the faces of a corpses, even though at the moment Sara felt that her breathing was so heavy it could bend palm trees like coat-hangar wires.

This could be shortened or split up. My spell check says that “spiderwebs” should be two words.

Half of her sopped up the wonderful quiet rebellion of the written statement, while the other half of her screamed for her fingers to tear the incriminating piece of paper into a million little spits of idealism and then burn them one by one, so that they erupted like stars shuffling their way out of supernova cocoons.

Woo… lovely sentence.

Streetlights were like smokestacks.
They smudged out starlight like a thumb smashing ants.

You could put these together and it wouldn’t hurt.

She wondered if, after she had her head decapitated by the Hierarchy, if God would let her sit with the stars for a while and watch the Solar System Ballet Troupe make pirouettes around the sun.

You should nix one of those ifs, but I‘m not sure which.

It also threw up all over her fingertips and chin; flecking them like a Catholic priest would baptize a newborn child.

Get rid of the “also” as it really drags.

Before her, the blobs of ink on the scrap of paper were gargoyles hunched on the ledge of a Gothic cathedral. They looked like little bits and pieces of her mood torn out of her chest and then laid like pressed-page blossoms before her. They looked like a dance troupe of black women contorted in two dimensions.
And above the blobs of ink:
This time is an invention of those incapable of love.

Ahhh… ^_^ o_o


---

I know this was ages in coming. In my defense, I was on holiday.

I did enjoy this, but not as much as your other pieces. Sometimes the imagery - like for the ink stains - was brilliant as normal, but in other places - like the ink being an artery - it didn't quite work. It felt forced. A big thing that I love about your writing is the effortlessness of the poetry within the prose, but that was lacking here in a few places.

Also, the sentences structure. Short and curt is good when used sparingly, but you went a bit overboard with it in places.

Sorry if I'm simply repeating what others have said, but I try not read other people's reviews. It biases my judgment. ^_^

This thing is peppered with metaphores and similies, and it's making me sneeze! Seriously, though, you might want to rethink some of those.

Shedding sleep like onionskins.

Huh?

Flakes of dead skin fluttered around his head for a moment like gnats

The air tasted like reams and reams of paper and had a thick, melted styrofoam humidity.

good description

And the smell of ink was invading lungs.

It made her brain feel like a dead jellyfish.

First, I'm not digging the beginning-of-paragraph "And." It's one thing to begin a sentence with "and;" it's another to start a paragraph. Second, how does one feel with a brain "like a dead jellyfish?"

“You're preaching to the choir, Citizen.”