Young Writers Society

Prologue

Where was he?

Dear God, please don’t take him. Don’t take another person from me.

“Perry?” I called, my voice ringing through the hollow black winter air. Footsteps shuffled across the frost-fielded grass, and my heart hammered. Keeping the knife in my shaking sweating hand was more or less impossible; only adrenaline-pumping fear managed to keep it between my icy fingers.

Whose footsteps was I hearing? Perry’s? The killer’s?

It didn’t matter. I had to find him. Alive or dead. Whether or not it was the definitive thing that reasoned this very same fate for me. “Perry!” I screamed, and the footsteps ran forward, wordless in their pursuit. Night allowed for me to see nothing, and I felt succumbed to this lightless world lacking moon and stars. My breaths were strained. I’d seen this all before.

December 13th. My 17th birthday. The day I was destined to die.



~*~*~*~



Chapter One


“Tell me what your dream was about this time.”

I sighed. The rhythmic tapping of his fingers on his black pants bugged the crap out of me, but I didn’t need him finding any other psychological insecurities that apparently riddled my shattered psyche.

Why did adults always turn their chairs that way when they were trying to be relatable? You know, how they turn it backwards but then they sit to face you anyway. Ugh. I wished Mr. Shorts would turn himself around so I didn’t have to look him in the eyes like he always required. Or better - have him leave the room completely. I hate psychiatrists.

“Marra?”

I blinked back to reality. “Oh. Yeah?”

“We were discussing your nightmares.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it and gnawed sheepishly at the chapped surface of my lower lip. My eyes swiveled to trace the weary old hands of the wall clock, trudging their way around the face and up to the 10.

“Marra.”

“Yeah? Oh, right.”

Okay, so a moment of honesty - I think he was onto something about my ADD.

I cleared my head, and for a second caught the frosty-blue gaze of my own eyes in the mirror. Another moment of honesty?

Nope. “I had a dream about…well, I was back at my old home, playing with my dog Keefer in the yard. So no nightmare.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said, smiling wryly. Even though he was right, I wanted to respond Of course you don’t believe it, it’d mean that these sessions are paying off and my parents don’t have to pay for your B.S. therapy anymore.

I…didn’t say that, of course…

Unfortunately.

Instead, I said, raising my hand, “I vow to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

So help me God. I wish.

“This isn’t court.”

“Yeah, but it sounds official.”

He gave a small laugh, and rubbing his somewhat-beardy chin there was a second where I didn’t completely hate his guts. These were what I called the Mr. Shorts Moments. They were rare windows of time, milliseconds usually, where I didn’t completely despise my horribly unconfident and clueless counselor. These moments where he wasn’t trying, I almost felt his understanding genuinely was beyond skin-deep.

The next words broke that: “All right, Marra. You’re sixteen years old. You and I both know you’re mature enough to discuss this openly and whole-heartedly, to make you better.”

“Make me better? Last time I checked, my ‘condition’ wasn’t even that.”

“I’m not referring to your…” he danced around words precariously when it came to this topic, “abilities, here. I’m only suggesting that we find a way to improve your suicidal impulses.”

Before you start questioning, I’ll tell you that I’m actually not suicidal. Sure, I have my moments, but all-in-all it’s a complete misunderstanding. The thing is, my premonitions seem to get me into trouble. Ever since that car accident, I haven’t gone a full week without them. Always fuzzy, but always so…real. My first dream - a flight of stone steps, blood pooling at the bottom. I’d woken up to find a dead finch on my windowsill, just lying there. Its neck was snapped, it’s little birdie eyes staring into oblivion. Then I heard the news, only hours later. My neighbor Mrs. Finch was dead. She’d fallen down the stone steps of her garden, and in a one-in-a-million chance snapped her neck during the fall as well as having been skewered by a pointed spike ornament that had fallen in the process and pierced her torso post-mortem. According to the rumors, there’d been a lot of blood.

Circumstance? Maybe. But the more this stuff happens, the more I have to suspect it’s not. And the more I try to stop it - the more I fail to stop it - the harder I try. Risks are no object. Risking my neck’s a small price to pay for helping someone I know doesn’t deserve to die. As far as I can figure, these are the only kinds of deaths I see.

“Marra, I will openly say that I have faith in what you can do. Finding people who are dead or dying…it’s an incredible gift. But a terrible one. I completely understand the trauma this has on you, especially given the circumstances surrounding it.”

“That’s a lot of words for saying that it’s just the karma coming back, because the accident was my fault,” I said bitterly, looking down towards my hands. It’d been an accident, but does it matter? I’d taken a man from his pregnant wife, for God’s sake. Why did God keep coming up? ‘So help me God,’ ‘for God’s sake.’ If God were so willing to help, why wouldn’t he? In my mind, God’s existence had been lost with the man in the silver ‘97 Pontiac.

Mr. Shorts sighed. “I know it’s hard to forgive yourself, Marra, but car accidents happen. I’ve had to work with plenty of bad people. The criminally-insane. Men and women on death row. They all have tying similarities…things that make them all alike. You don’t have any of those qualities.”

“None?”

“Nothing but manic and suicidal impulses.”

I nodded grudgingly. My toes curled uncomfortably in my tennis shoes. I was sweaty in my shorts and tee, but I felt a little cold now too.

“So,” Mr. Shorts said, “your dream?”

“This one wasn’t as terrible.”

“And why’s that?”

My eyes pierced through his, an unintentional but somehow terrifying action that caused him to blink away for a moment. My voice was strangely casual as I said, “Because, I was the victim.”

Well, damn.

Usually, I'm not a fan of first person. And usually when there's a hint of romance and the first-person narrator is female, I groan a little bit and then stick on a happy face and kindly skirt around the issue that the narrator's just a self-insertion, etc. etc.

So, I'm pleased and surprised by this. The quality of your writing reassured me initially, but then I got to the paragraph about Mrs. Finch and--if you'll pardon the drop into slang--I knew this was legit. Your characters have life and aren't being reduced to stereotypes or bland descriptions. The narrator's voice is consistent. The writing is solid. This isn't just a semi-original hash of your favorite stories; it's got a pulse of its own.

And so, therefore: damn. That was really freakin' good. Awesome work. 'Liked' for sure.

But just 'cause it was great doesn't mean you're escaping without critique proper, though I gather that's what you want anyway:

Now, this comment's just my opinion for sure, and I don't think there's much grounding in objectivity, but one thing I noticed was your tendency toward poetic/dramatic words and phrases. The prologue in particular was full of them:

"hollow black winter air"
"lightless world lacking moon and stars"
the personification of fear and night

but you also had some in the first chapter. "My eyes pierced through his" is looking at me from where I'm typing.

On the one hand, I like them. You didn't overdo it, and they certainly add to the tension in the prologue and the drama at the end of the chapter. On the other hand, I did notice them. Naturally, part of the reason that I noticed them is that I was looking for things to mention.

Maybe others will have a better opinion on this. I guess my own is that you should keep those descriptions, so long as Marra would actually articulate things in that way, and just watch out for going too overboard.

Also looking at me from where I'm typing is the "so deep that he struggled not to cringe away"

Which is a violation of first person (my cat just sat in my lap and would like to say hello, by the way). Marra doesn't have access to Shorts' thoughts or feelings, so how does she know that he had to struggle not to cringe away? (You could fix by adding in the conditional 'would'--would have to struggle.

I didn't notice any other slips, but they might be there . Just keep that in mind--Marra can't speak for anyone else's state of being without being speculative.

Okay, one thing on word choice that you might want to change--you do use a lot of adverbs in the tags. I've seen far worse offenses than yours, but still. Adverbs are telling and clunky and parasitic, so get rid of a few of them. Your dialogue's strong and can speak for itself without the adverbs' assistance, so let the reader do a little work and delete some of them.

...and, it's storming here and I want to post this now before my Internet flakes out. I'm so eager for the next installment. Again, this was so well done. Next time I'll bring my critiquing A-game.

Let me know if you have any questions! And let me know when the next bit's posted, please!

Rach

I want to let you know that I was linked here by my pal Rachael, who told me this piece was awesome and I would basically be doing myself a disservice by not giving it a read. And that would be totally irrelevant and would violate the point of reviewing my own opinion, except that I think she's absolutely right.

Maybe that's not so surprising, because I'm a little bit of a first-person junkie and this piece is full of endearing snark and snappy dialogue, but still. Your intro drew me in, your execution kept me interested, your level of character intimacy endeared me to your narrator, and I feel as I had a chance to grasp the beginnings of a major conflict. In broad strokes, this beginning was wonderful, and I would turn the page if given the chance.

(Also, I think the title is smart, but now I'm just gushing.)

Here's what I'm talking about, so I'm not just generalizing...

I sighed. The rhythmic tapping of his fingers on his black pants bugged the crap out of me, but I didn’t need him finding any other psychological insecurities that apparently riddled my shattered psyche.

This whole exchanged worked nearly perfectly for me as the sort of baseline establishment of your narrator's voice, and it stands on its own as a great representation of what a close first-person can lend to exposition. I think my favorite part is the way you blend the objective action itself (he's tapping his hands on his pants) into your narrator's reaction (she hates it) which trails into more general thoughts (she doesn't want him to be sniffing out any other potential insecurities.) And, of course, she's witty about it, which makes it work all the better.

And I'm gushing again, so let me go actually critique.

If that first quote worked flawlessly for me as I got to know your narrator's voice, there were some others that didn't jive quite as well. Some of it is subjective, but I'll try to explain myself:

I opened my mouth, then closed it and gnawed sheepishly at the chapped surface of my lower lip. My eyes swiveled to trace the weary old hands of the wall clock, trudging their way around the face and up to the 10.

Your mileage may vary, but with such a close narrator I was a little jarred at the way she relayed these minute physical details about herself-- particularly the stylized way she did it. The eyes swiveling, gnawing sheepishly...we're so deep in her head that I wasn't quite believing she would comment on herself in that way. From the human perspective, I don't consciously think about or narrate the movements of my own eyes.

He gave a small laugh, and rubbing his somewhat-beardy chin there was a second where I didn’t completely hate his guts. These were what I called the Mr. Shorts Moments. They were rare windows of time, milliseconds usually, where I didn’t completely despise my horribly unconfident and clueless counselor. These moments where he wasn’t trying, I almost felt his understanding genuinely was beyond skin-deep.

I like that she acknowledges that there are moments when she sees a different side of Mr. Shorts, and I like the snarky way she labels them...I just couldn't quite see what made this particular instance any different from the way he behaved for the rest of the scene. Was it the laugh, or did she think he was nervous because he was rubbing his chin and that endeared him to her? How does that contrast with his everyday demeanor?

And I know it's arbitrary advice, but there were a couple of points in the narrative where I think reading out loud would benefit you. Not the dialogue (I think that was pitch-perfect the whole way through) but some awkwardness in the prose structure. There's one in the segment I quoted above: "He gave a small laugh, and rubbing his somewhat-beardy chin there was a second where I didn't completely hate his guts." And "I cleared my head, and for a second caught the frosty-blue gaze of my own eyes in the mirror."

Also-- and this just occurred to me as I was skimming back down through-- I would love to have the portion where she explains her first premonition expanded upon. I understood it as is, but it's a potential opportunity to learn more about your narrator's life, and how she made the transition from that first occurrence to where she is now. Those are questions that could be answered as the piece goes on, but hey. It could also be an opportunity for your readers to jive with your narrator.

Okay, I think that's all I've got off the top of my head...thank you very much for the read!

Quasi

Work with me here, I'm still a new-new person!

I really liked this chapter, there is a bunch of books out there like this but this one didnt feel the same as the others, it was different in a good way! I did like the beginning where you gave a really good personification about nighttime, also i liked when you made her seem like a typical teenager being annoyed at the fact her therapist turned his seat around.

There was something about your dialogue, it seems like chunky and all over the place, (prob cause shes ADD), but it didnt appeal to me too much.

Well that's all i got. Ill definitely be following you and reading your next chapters!

Oooh, me likie. The attitude, the hook... Color me intrigued.

I liked the first person here. Marra had attitude and snark, but she didn't seem to be mean-spirited. I loved the moment where she acknowledged that Mr. Shorts wasn't all that bad occasionally. It was a bit grudging and couched insults, sure, but it was there and it showed that despite her not liking her situation, she doesn't completely hate him. Great character insight there.

I was a bit unsure about the whole counselling thing and why Marra is so against it. I mean, she obviously is sort of in her own little world occasionally. If I were a counselor and my patient kept completely zoning out like she does, I'd be concerned. And yes, therapists do manage to exude that "I care" vibe that still manages to seem incredibly grating, but that's their job. Marra really does seem to need some help. Why is she so opposed to someone who apparently believes her about whatever is happening to her? I'd like to see more of this relationship. How did Mr. Shorts first react when she told him about the premonitions? Has he been helping her out at all? Do her parents know about it, or is it just the suicidal thing that made them bring her to therapy? If they do know, what do they think about it? If they don't, how did Mr. Shorts get her to open up about it if she dislikes the idea of therapy so much?

I did like this a lot. You've got me hooked and I want to read more!

Good luck! Shoot me a PM if you have any questions!

~GryphonFledgling