Young Writers Society

Rated 12+ for some sensitive/inappropriate parts

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The next day, I went home from school like nothing had happened, like my life wasn’t threatened for first time ever. I wondered how many times I looked at the classroom windows checking, suspecting every shadow I saw, how many times my professors noticed me acting like a complete paranoid. Maybe, I really was a complete paranoid. Just, how many freaking times…?

I grew more and more tensed as I thought about it, and I could hardly get it off my mind. Then I stopped walking. I was about to go through the same narrow street again, hesitating whether I should continue or not. But where else could I go to go home?

Ultimately, I decided that it was still too early compared to the night before, thinking that it was still safe. I looked at my watch and it read 4:39 pm. Yep. It’s still too early. Or so I thought.

I continued walking, and by the middle of that narrow street, two hands surprisingly appeared from behind, covering my face with a handkerchief.

Holy scrap! I thought to my surprise before I fell unconscious.



Panic crept on me as I finally regained consciousness and felt myself lying face down on marble tiles. Everything happened so fast. I ached as I turned to lay myself flat on the floor.

“Hey. Can you hear me?” a girl spoke with a sweet voice. “Can you hear me?”

I opened my eyes and realized that the lights were out. It was already evening, and the moonlight which was coming from the window to the right was the only thing that was making things visible, even for a little bit.

“Who are you?” I cautiously asked, sitting up. As far as my eyes could see, I was in a cage, and it struck me. What the heck!? I’m kidnapped!? I thought as I held the iron bars, terrified. I’m so stupid! I should have never passed through that street! But then, I saw the girl who spoke to me. She was right there in front of me, inside a separate cage, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her head was down, sitting sideways on bended knees.

“I’m Sophia Cloudkeeper,” she answered calmly. “We’re prisoners as you can see.”

“I need to get ou—!”

“Don’t be too scared,” she cut my sentence.

“But my parents will be worried!”

“So has my mom…”

I stopped ranting and looked at her. She looked as gloomy as how dark the room was, like how silent it fell silent for a moment.

“So…you’ve been here for so long already?” I politely asked.

“Yes,” she said. “For weeks now.”

A tear flowed down from her left eye. And so I thought of how much pain she had already suffered from, how many tears she had wept. I bowed my head down, saddened by the thought of it. It must have been so hard…and back then, I was already beginning to suffer the same fate.

I looked at her closely in the dark. I could easily feel the sorrow I saw in her eyes. I wanted to ask her if she was a vampire like me, but then I didn’t want to ask the obvious. There could not be another reason for her to be locked in here.

“Have you…tried to escape?” I reluctantly asked.

“What could a girl like me do?” she protested.

“I…don’t know…” I gave up. There was no point in arguing.

Out of a sudden, I smelled something familiar. It was blood! I heard a door open and looked. A man stood in the doorway, holding a cup. I could not see him clearly because of the shadow cast by the bright light from room behind him. He flicked on the light of the room we were in and I recognized him to be the hunter who had threatened to kill me the night before.

“Let us go!” I yelled at him, standing up. I was angered by the sight of him.

“We will…after you’re both dead,” he said.

‘We will’? I thought. He’s not alone?

“But right now, I’m going to test something,” he continued.

He went down the few flights of stairs which connected the door to the floor. The smell of blood grew stronger. I started to get bothered by the smell and tried to blow the smell off my nose but Sophia unexpectedly seemed to be unaffected. I suspected that the blood was in the cup the man was holding.

He came to my cage and splashed the liquid in the cup on my face. It really was blood! I fell down on my butt and struggled to make myself still. The smell was all over me and it was completely making me thirsty. The hunter laughed and turned away.

“I can see that you haven’t been drinking enough blood your entire life, have you?” he said.

I kept silent, struggling to stay still. My hands were supporting me and kept me from completely falling down.

“Go ahead and drink. You should’ve looked for a donor and drunk blood rather than suck people’s energy into your psychic vortex…you parasite!” he continued. “You see now. That is the reason why you must die!”

Laughing, he left the room and closed the door behind him. Then I let myself fall down on my back. I couldn’t think straight with all the blood overwhelming my senses. I sat up and wiped the blood off my face with my hands. I couldn’t help but look at the stain on my hands and smell the blood. My eyes were trembling badly.

It felt like there was no stopping: how the smell of blood filled the very spaces of my nose and my entire throat; how it made me lose myself, giving in to the bloodthirsty beast that had been sleeping inside of me, right at the middle of my stomach.

It made—no—it literally forced me to remember, like it was smashing framed portraits of dreadful memories on me, those months of anguish of my ‘awakening’ – the time when I found out that I was a vampire, the time when I really hated myself for being a parasite. I never wanted to be like this. But I also never wanted to be overcome by this. It was just that…I had never made contact to so much blood.

I was ready to lie down and just let myself fall unconscious like I used to do whenever I thirst…until I heard Sophia’s voice again.

“Are you weak?” she said. “Will you just let yourself be overcome by this now? Go ahead and drink like the man said. You’ll feel better.”

I managed to return to myself. I dropped my hands and looked at her. The light allowed me to get a better look. Her eyes and hair were brown and she had a rather bloomy fair skin. The brown jacket and a cream white skirt she wore matched her features well.

“I…I’m afraid I won’t be able to…control myself again,” I stuttered.

“Be brave and drink!” she said. “If you don’t drink now, then I can say that you haven’t really accepted yourself as a vampire.”

“You-you’re right,” I seriously replied, trying to compose myself from the thirst. “I…I haven’t accepted myself as a vampire yet. Maybe, I never will. I just wanted be normal.”

“All vampires want to be normal,” she said.

Then a thought came to my mind and curiously asked—

“Why aren’t you affected by blood?”

“I’m a psychic vampire. I’m not hybrid like you are.”

“Oh, I see.”

I began wiping the blood on my face.

“Here,” said Sophia as she handed me her handkerchief. “Use this.”

“Thanks,” I said as I took it.

I tried to blow off the smell through my nose as I started wiping my face with the handkerchief.

“It…seems like psychic and hybrid vampires are very unfortunate,” I sadly sighed. “We’re the ones who are targeted by hunters.”

“No, they catch sanguinarians too.”

“Really?” I asked in disbelief. “Why do they also catch them?”

“Some of those blood vampires are desperate and imitate the vampires in fiction, aggressively biting people on their necks.”

“What the heck!?”

“When I first got here, a sanguine vampire was in your cage,” she said and paused for a moment of silence. I could hear the sadness in the quietness of her voice. “He’s like in his early twenties and looked like a really scary person. They said he committed suicide before they were about to kill him…”

She sighed and I bowed my head down in frustration.

“The life of vampires is hard and these hunters are making it harder…” she said in a scornful, low voice.

“…I agree.”

I lied down on my back as the silence grew back inside the room, looking at the circular lamp on the ceiling with narrowed eyes. I looked away after a few seconds, wondering to myself, Why did he leave the light on now? Is it because vampires are somehow visually photosensitive?

Will we get out of here? I thought, anxious as I closed my eyes and struggled to sleep.

Saved.

I'm sorry, but......I really don't want to read another vampire vic.

Nevertheless, I'll give you my impression before I realized that:

It's pretty good, but it needs some work. Try to show, not tell. (I'm not sure how to explain that, it's one of those things you kind of learn as you write more..... I'm sorry! I really want to explain, but I don't know how! ...I'll go ask.)

Sometimes the wording is kinda clunky--take out anything that isn't necessary. Also, watch your punctuation--I think I saw a place where there could have been a comma. (Nothing bad, though, so good on you.)

Overall, decent, and I think you can improve.

Hey bro! Here for a review.

All right, so I read the first chapter to get acquainted with the story, and since there wasn't much to critique (great writing!), I just came right to this chapter.

First off, it does seem extremely stupid of him to go back to the same alley where he was attacked the very next day. I was inwardly groaning at his decision. However, I do give you props for showing his indecision and the way he convinces himself that he'll be fine; it was realistic and I could easily identify, having rationalized things to myself, too (though not to that drastic of an extent).

One grammatical issue I noticed was your past tense -- there were places that it was used incorrectly, and since this seems to be a recurring issue, I'll address it really quickly here.

I grew more and more tensed as I thought about it, and I hardly could have stopped thinking about it.

The bolded section is the troublesome part; the way this is worded, it's implied that Seth couldn't have stopped thinking about something distant (detached, in a way) even if he tried. You've made it seem like there's something in his future that will cause him problems later on instead of it being an issue here and now for him. I really hope that makes sense... >.< Anyway, my suggestion for rewording this is: "...and I could hardly stop thinking about it." That makes the issue immediate.

I noticed quite a few section like this, where you misuse the past tense "had" and I think the main trouble is that you're trying to show something's happened in the past, but you use too many past tense verbs, making it seem like it happened a long time ago, longer than the narrative epoch. Sorry, I really hope this makes sense; let me know if you need more clarification.

Your whole take on writing from a vampire's viewpoint is interesting, and it seems like there could be some kind of romantic interest between Seth and Sophia, and since they're both vampires, and not one human and one vampire who's impossibly in love with her, I am fine with it! ;D

I really like how you implied that there are different types of vampires, and I'm interested in finding out the distinctions between types and what they all do. This shows some great potential of being original and different from other vampire fictions, and I look forward to seeing what you do with it!

Let me know if you've got any questions or whatnot. Keep up the great work, and please let me know when you post more! Cheers. (:

Hey Whisperer! Shrubs here to review. I might not give a lengthy review, but would still try to help you!



Repetition: I found it to be a problem in the first paragraph of your chapter. You had 'life' being repeated twice in a single sentence, and that too shabbily. Then you had 'wondered' next to each other, and the way they were used was similar, so it seemed so uncreative. I think you should read your whole chapter after you're done with it, and try to use different words or phrases. For example, just read the following sentence and tell me what you thought about it, 'kay?

I touched my face, feeling the bones through my palms, and I couldn't fathom the touch's ability. The mere touch of my bones crippled my body, and I could feel a know turning in my stomach.

I'm not sure if I made myself clear, but repetition is not always bad. But in this case, and the case you're having, the way your repetitions occur is also weird. I have emphasised so much on 'touch' that I am sure the next time the reader hears the word, he's gonna freak out.

An example from your writing:

I grew more and more tensed as I thought about it, and I hardly could have stopped thinking about it.

I was finished writing the above comment, and then went to read again when I noticed the same problem again. The next instance. You should note down that the kind of problem you have is not of repeating a certain fascinating word like 'bolted' or 'trundled' but something(phrase or word) that we use quite often in our lives. You should re-check what you write after every couple of minutes, and even though it would stop the flow, it would prevent such errors. Or if not that, try reading the whole thing fully at the last.


Secondly, you had thoughts most of the time in italics, rather than directly showing us what he thought. I don't deny the fact that actual thoughts(the one in italics) are equally important, but filling the whole story with them is not the correct thing. I'd like you to ease down on them, and think of other ways of saying what is running in your character's head. That is much less messier, and it also doesn't blow the story's thought process out of proportion. Like here, this is a sentence you had: What happened? was the first thought that came into my mind when I felt myself lying face down on marble tiles. Instead of beginning the part like this, you could have taken a different approach like this:

As I felt my body falling hard to the marble floor, various thoughts circled in my head. As I tried to recall what had happened, a sharp pain sliced my head into parts. Pressing my head with the tip of my fingers, I tried to soothe down the pain.

The difference: The same thing has been said in two ways. I don't say that your way was wrong, but you had used it too many times that it seemed boring and it didn't catch my interest. I would like you to experiment with your writing and try new things.

Okay, so far there are three unique things in your story for me. First, the concept of Parasite is amazing, secondly you have a good division of vampires, and you've divided characters into different categories made be yourself. Thirdly, I think it's maybe for the first time that we're seeing a process wherein some people mare trying to eliminate vampires from the world. That is unique and interesting. The words you had, I mean the categories, like Hybrid, Psychic were quite interesting and I am personally very interested to know how they all are different from each other, and how things are going to turn up for Seth.

On a duller side, I didn't find this chapter as hooking as it could have been. The kidnapping and everything seemed to be so fast. The last time I read he confessed he was a vampire. I wanted to know more about him, about his life. It seems that the kidnapping has been rushed. You got over with it too soon, and the descriptions were null here. Coming to another point, your descriptions were non-existent. Most of the things I know about the character, about the story is from telling, and not showing. I would suggest you to work on that and make this more interesting.

Other thing that I'd like to say is that you told us how thirsty and helpless he felt when the blood was splashed at his face. That's the problem. You told. Not showed us. I don't want you to drag the story by telling how each particle created a sensation in his nose, but you should use some imagery to show us how he felt. Don't tell us, rather show. Show us everything, but to a limit. Don't go on showing also. So you have to find a balance and the sooner you find it the better it would be for your story.

Like if it were my story, this is how I would have preferred to show his thirst:

The moment the sweet steaming smell of blood entered my nostrils, a churning sensation began turning my insides. It was so...I could feel my hands shaking, and the more I thought about it, more wild I could feel myself turning into.

It ain't the best thing, so you would know how to make it better.


Also, watch out for tenses(like RH said) and for some lame typos. Hehe!

Sorry if I were harsh, Nate!

~Shrubs

Hey there! I'm here to review!
Sorry I forgot about this, I blame the whole team review thingy, seriously. xD

Okay, I'll start with just a few nitpicks.

Holy scrap! I exclaimed in my thought as I fell unconscious.

Do people really think this when getting captured? Holy scrap?
I doubt it. Maybe try making his reaction a little bit more realistic. xD

“Hey. Can you hear me?” a sweet girl’s voice spoke. “Can you hear me?”

How does he know she's a sweet girl? Is it the voice that's sweet? If so, maybe you should clarify that.

I opened my eyes and realized that the lights were out. I noticed an open window to my right and realized that it was already evening.

You have this 'realized' then 'noticed' than back to 'realized' here. Maybe change that up. You don't have to tell us that he 'found' out something but try to state it instead.

“So has my mom,” she said.

I don't like this sentences, it sounds weird.

The hunter laughed evilly and turned away.

Okay, I really think that you should NEVER say that someone laughs 'evilly'. That should be done through your characteristics of the character or something. We know he's the bad guy so naturally his laugh would be evil! xD
The thing you should mention is if his laugh is NOT evil and is actually nice, then you'd say so because it goes out of our natural thoughts.

“I’m a psychic vampire,” she answered. “I’m not hybrid like you are.”

I think maybe you should explain a bit of the different here between psychic and hybrid because we don't know.

Overall, I do like this take on vampires. I'm honestly tired of vampire novels and reading the same thing over and over again and seeing something new makes me feel like a bit happy. So ten points for you on that one.

One thing that I have to say though is that your writing is still leaning on the more telly side of things. You're still telling us what's going on instead of showing us. This is one the key points that you should look up and practice with your writing. I noticed it from the very beginning. However, you're making improvements as you go along and I love seeing how much you get better and better.

Your characters are interesting, I like reading about this guy here. He seems like he has a strong personality but he also seems a bit dumb. xD We'll see how he gets out of this situation though. lol

Keep writing and let me know if you need anything else. Also!
Remind me when you post the next chapter of this!

-Pink

I know I saved a spot here, but I need the points badly, and you probably know that. (Oh, Twin, thanks for the cheer! )

I wondered how many times I looked at the classroom windows checking, suspecting every shadow I saw, how many times my professors noticed me acting like a complete paranoid.

This line is a bit long. Maybe you could have just used a semi colon between saw and how instead of a comma. That would lessen any confusion this sentence's length could give.

Just, how many freaking times…?

Slang alert! Yeah, I know it's fine. It's your novel. You want it casual - informal. Really talkin' to the readers. But there's a but. The ellipsis ending with a question mark is bothering me a bit. But maybe it's just me. Another thing about this line is the: freaking. I know it's now accepted, but just a trivia (not a real nitpick), it's fricking not freaking. But I do think this is intentional; probably a euphemism for fricking which is a direct euphemism for a word... not supposed to be mentioned here.

but she wasn’t looking at me. She was sitting sideways on bended knees.

I'd rather read these two sentences together.

“But my parents will be worried!” I exclaimed.

“So will my mom,” she said.

She looked so gloomy in the darkness.

I hope you can elaborate on this. It's hard to picture what she really looked like. Just gloomy? Not enough.

I looked at her eyes and saw how sad they were.

You used saddened in the previous line. I'm not saying that this is wrong, but could you please get another word for it? Something that could clarify and intensify the appearance of her eyes. That would be more satisfying to read.

My eyes shook terribly.

Ummm... I couldn't picture this well. Uhh...

It made—no—it literally forced me to remember, like it was smashing framed portraits of dreadful memories on me, those months of anguish of my ‘awakening’ – the time when I found out that I was a vampire, the time when I really hated myself for being a parasite. I never wanted to be like this. But I also never wanted to be overcome by this. It was just that…I had never made contact to so much blood.

This paragraph was good. =)

I managed to return to myself. I dropped my hands and looked at her. She had brown hair and eyes and had fair skin. She was wearing a brown jacket and a cream white skirt.

Could you tell us the source of light here? That's importane, considering that the colors mentioned were light colors.

“You’re right,” I seriously replied, trying to compose myself from the thirst. “I haven’t accepted myself as a vampire yet. Maybe, I never will. I just wanted be normal.”

He's still "trying to compose" himself. I expect him to continue his stutter.

“It…seems like psychic and hybrid vampires are very unfortunate,” I said in sadness.

You could probably just say, I sadly sighed. Or whatever. The dialogue tags are sometimes... used too much?

I exclaimed, “What the heck—?”

Dash not necessary.

I could hear the sadness in the quietness of her voice.

How many times have you used that word? Spice your prose up with specifics! NOTE: not necessarily synonyms, but more specific synonyms. =)

“He’s like in his early twenties and looked like a real criminal. They said he committed suicide before they were about to kill him…”

What does a real criminal look like? You should describe that rather than sayind, "like a real criminal." You get what I mean. Not all real criminals look scary or tough as I assume you have intended to mean.

I lay down on my back as the silence grew back inside the room, looking at the circular lamp on the ceiling with narrowed eyes.

Here we go again with the lie thingy. Memorize its forms. It's worth it.

OVERALL:

My number one nitpick would be: You seriously - and sometimes annoyingly - use dialogue tags a lot. I'm pretty sure you know that you can remove tags at some parts, when only two people are conversing and their conversations are continuous. That would make you not use so much "said". I know you've used replied, or whatever else, but seriously, you gotta stop using a dialogue tag at each line spoken by a character.

About the story line, you should know that I don't read these kinds of stories so lines like this:

“I’m a psychic vampire,” she answered. “I’m not hybrid like you are.”

made it interesting for me. 'Cause I'm not familiar with the vocabs used and such. So yeah...

This line is a bit long. Maybe you could have just used a semi colon between saw and how instead of a comma. That would lessen any confusion this sentence's length could give.
- I actually am not sure if it's correct to use a semicolon instead of a comma there. o.o
Slang alert! Yeah, I know it's fine. It's your novel. You want it casual - informal. Really talkin' to the readers. But there's a but. The ellipsis ending with a question mark is bothering me a bit. But maybe it's just me. Another thing about this line is the: freaking. I know it's now accepted, but just a trivia (not a real nitpick), it's fricking not freaking. But I do think this is intentional; probably a euphemism for fricking which is a direct euphemism for a word... not supposed to be mentioned here.
- I looked it up in an online dictionary and it said that 'fr*cking' is vulgar so I'm sticking with 'freaking'.
Could you tell us the source of light here? That's importane, considering that the colors mentioned were light colors.
- I didn't completely get this. It was told that the hunter turned on the light of the room, right? But I'm still gonna edit this part to make it clear.
My number one nitpick would be: You seriously - and sometimes annoyingly - use dialogue tags a lot. I'm pretty sure you know that you can remove tags at some parts, when only two people are conversing and their conversations are continuous. That would make you not use so much "said". I know you've used replied, or whatever else, but seriously, you gotta stop using a dialogue tag at each line spoken by a character.
- I read somewhere in YWS that it's preferred to keep on using dialogue tags so I'm confused >.< and am gonna Google about that right now XD.

My review was really done yet! I had to go offline and clicked submit instead of save! (LOL) Mistakes. But anyway, I'm glad that you like it. I'm glad that you're not using any vulgar. (NOTE: I just mentioned that in case you didn't know.) And good, just go research! Keep writing, Twin!

Jash ♥