Young Writers Society

Six bikers were run off road by a semi. A man and a woman were dead, their motorcycles in ruins. There were still four bikers alive. One of those four was unconscious and badly hurt, her bike had been clipped by another thrown forward by the truck. The other three drive to the side of the road and stop, unharmed, except that some fragments of glass and debris had been thrown forward from the wrecks and one of the men had been cut on his face, and another deep into his arm. The three men survey the wreck, while the trucker gets out of his cabin. The healthy biker runs to the road in order to look for help

“Why did you do that!” screeches the driver.

He yells in a fit of shock and blame, “you just murdered them, you just ran them off the road!” sobs the man whose arm has been cut. His mind begins to collapse in upon itself at the dreadfulness of that which had just occurred. The man looked through denial, grief, sorrow, sickness, anger, hatred, but never pity or forgiveness, for in this scene there is no forgiveness, only what passes.

“No I didn’t,” the truck driver, “you punks drove into me.”

“You did! You just did!” cries the cut-faced man.

“NO I DIDNT” yells the truck driver, grabbing a baseball bat from his cabin.

The cut-faced man is ruthlessly relentless. He is the leader of this group of bikers and has seen some terrible scenes on the road, but he has never had a situation like this. The newness of the graphics, in which two of his friends are dead, with another clinging to life, was hard to assemble inside his head, yet he was able to react in his usual slow, calculating manner, despite feeling disassembled from the inside by the tragedy of the scene.

The cut-faced man grabbed his own baseball bat from the back of his motorcycle but kept it hidden. “This would be easy” he thought. “This trucker is an amateur.”

“Dude, are you fucking drunk?” says the Man whose arm is still bleeding. He had spotted a whiskey bottle in the cab of the truck.

The corpses on the ground gleamed back at the truck driver and for a second he shivered.

A trace of hesitation and the man whose arm was dripping switches his motorcycle into gear. The bike throws the trucker into confusion while he runs straight at the trucker who falls down, but is unharmed. But the driver doesn’t see that it has rained the night before and suddenly he cannot control his bike. He slips on the ground’s curvature and starts to slide. He trips and crashes and his bike starts to catch fire, he begins to burn. He’s smouldering, but already dead.
The cut-faced man, aware of the imminent implications upon his soul, which was bound to start a trek and to be driven further into the mind’s depths of pathos, and to eventually come to represent nothing but the horror of life, makes his move, in lieu of idleness, he grabs his baseball bat and strikes the trucker in the hand, causing him to drop his own baseball bat. Without a weapon, and at least 3 broken fingers, the trucker was helpless. He yelled in pain.

“Why did you do that, I’ll kill you” he screams as he yells and starts to run to his truck.

“He’s going for a gun! He’s reaching for a gun” the biker imagines to his sheer terror; He has a mortal fear of guns.
The trucker reaches for his door but the cut-faced man is on him. It is now the two of them alone. The trucker tries to block but cannot. He is punched hard in the gut by a bat. The biker slaps the bat again, this time considerably harder. The hit sends the trucker to the ground with the violent impact of force.

“Get the fuck down” in exasperation calls the violent attacker. “I don’t want to keep hurting you.”

But the trucker wasn’t having any of it. He was wasted and out of control, he had run these people off the road on purpose. He wanted the biker to keep hurting him; he wanted the biker to kill him.

He was at once a trucker and at last a nihilist. He had begun his journey with the knowledge that he had killed his wife and kids by accident, carrying in with him from a trip to South America a deadly pathogen that had slaughtered his lover and his baby girl. There was no god any longer for this man.

The South American trip was well paid and took him a few weeks out on the road but was enough to feed his family for the rest of the year. He returned home with a slight cough but it was nothing major. However, the cough had infected his family, and a week after he had returned they were dead.

“What world is this,” he long thought, “what world is this that can do such damage to such innocents for the sins of the guilty? Perhaps the guilty were meant to live in this hell and to continually suffer. Perhaps these men like I must walk through hell. Perhaps there is no salvation, and there is no god. For, he has killed my babies. There is no hope. All hope is dead. God has killed himself in front of me, just as I have killed myself in front of me, and I have killed my babies.”

“What god is this!” he shouted in agony at his controller, as he slowly backed away from the biker.

This man had spent the last month on a road trip, trying to control his pain. It had not worked, but only served to make him furious internally, for out on the road for hours alone is no consolation for pain. Being alone is not the solution to pain, for it is from being alone that pain is caused.

He drove at speeds far exceeding the speed limit, yet he had never even seen a cop. He drove, and sped. Swerved, took crazy turns, and did whatever he felt like, for he had no mind left for himself to defend against the jarring rupture within him caused by the disjoining of the chords that were threaded and braided to build his heart; his wife and child were dead. It was his fault. He would let his shame, guilt, regret, and self-hatred destroy him from the inside because that was the only way in which life could balance itself out again. He was to be destroyed, he figured, physically and mentally, figuratively and literally; how else could there ever be peace without such a memory as mine dying.

For the past week he had gradually grown moodier and moodier, and could barely stand his surroundings, which were always changing. The people he saw were reminders of the joys that others can feel yet that he himself would never feel again.

“They must never know of my pain,” he thought “for the world is too corruptible, and the blackness brought forth by such events decreases our humanity.” He had once thought the opposite and that tragedy was a core component of human life, yet now he believed that some tales just aren’t meant to be told.

He resolved to end his story. He drove for the past fifteen hours, loaded on whiskey. The intoxicant coursed through his veins and pierced his thoughts. They were dulled further and further, and he grew more resolute, more secured of his absolution in death. Not his peace through religious absolution, no, for him there would be no peace. But in absolution, he would be abolished. “This is what must be;” he thought “the ending that comes forth is of necessity.”

A few minutes before the start of this scene, he drove at a fast speed, drunk. He was looking for a way to die. He spotted the bikers up a few kilometres away. He drove fast to catch them.

"They will kill me if I disturb them,” he thought.

He barrelled forward, as if in a stagecoach, or hansom cab pulled by a large team of powerful horses that once finished their journey, died. He flew along the highway; he was pushed forward by a sense of urgency, an internally created pressure to create chaos and havoc upon himself.

“How do I get them to kill me?” he asked, to himself. He was slightly dreary due to his deadly combination of sleep depravity, his alcohol intake, his exhaustion, and the pain of his internal thoughts. He sped up trying to cut them off through the middle, to cause them to go off to the side of the road where he could then aggravate them enough to kill him. He had planned to go up, yet, when his foot slipped, he clipped the back two riders and through one of those two into another.

They tumbled, the front three stopped. He stopped and got out of his vehicle.

"Kill me. Do it. End me or I will kill you like I kill anything that comes near me.“ speaks the beaten trucker, a little while later. He had a broken hand but crawled pitifully away, clutching at dirt. He was dragging himself to the other side of the truck. He ran round but was too slow. The cut-faced man hit him in the shoulder again. There was a loud crack and the trucker screamed in pain. He had run to the truck door to make the remaining biker think that he was trying to escape. Instead, the biker thought it was a much more serious problem, a gun.

“So,” he thought “this is how I will die. One man alone with a baseball bat will kill me. Good. I’m glad he thinks I’m a killer. I am a killer. I have now killed four people, and my sins will die with me. I am assured to go to hell now and I will. I must. I have to. I should. I will. For, the fires of hell are all that can purify me now.”

The trucker continued towards the cab door. “I will kill you, like I killed the rest of them” he shouted.

“Do not talk about the others. All three of them did not deserve to die.”

“I claim no responsibility for your dare-devil friend, what he did was his choice and I will not pay for that sin as well.”

“He was trying to stop you, you disgrace” screamed the biker and he bashed the trucker’s kneecap.

“I killed them” screamed the man who would never walk again. “I killed them all and I do not apologize. I deserve no forgiveness. Oh god, if you were so great as to allow this to happen to me, I will pay for my sins in hell, rather than follow your word any longer, for your greatness is unacceptable to me any longer. If you had only stepped in, I would still be faithful. But you refuse, and for that, I have doomed myself.”

“Stop your fucking madness you fucking murdering piece of shit” contemptuously and insolently roared the cut-faced biker with a darkening expression and the hint of the beginnings of moral disease in his eyes.
He swung the bat down again, and hit the man in the face.

The trucker’s nose exploded and, losing consciousness, he falls hard to the cement. His last thoughts were blank, as if no man existed at all to see his life story pass before his eyes in the last moments before his death. Perhaps there had never been these thoughts, or perhaps, more likely, they had been played long ago when he had really died.

The man swung the bat again, and a cracking of skull signified death. Another bash and another crack, and this time larger, more devastating, splitting of the skull revealed the horrors within the depths of the human brain. He hit, and hit, and cracked the trucker’s face and skull into a paste. Nobody was there to stop him until suddenly he is thrown backwards with a tackle by the uninjured man. He has returned. There are three cops, a medical team, and other helpers running to the scene but they are too far behind. The uninjured man had driven to the nearest town to fetch them and they had returned just in time to see the biker killing the trucker. Oh but what their angle of perception must have shown them.
The uninjured man jumped atop the cut-faced man. “Why did you do that!” interrogated the uninjured man, “he should be in jail, not dead.” He grasped the cut-faced man tight, in a position resembling a hug.

“He deserved to die, and he was going for his gun” grunted the man on the bottom, who, pulling the uninjured man, a large biker, over in a rolling motion, they tumbled. He was an even larger biker, and had the strength to begin a roll. They rolled, and rolled, until they were clasped in a deep, deep hug. The two men were close friends, and the death of three of their friends would not be repressed, sublimated, or normalized, and neither will be able to disassociate themselves with this moment the rest of their lives. They rolled and rolled, and as the onlookers viewed the scene the men were rolling, tumbling, and gliding gracefully down a hill towards a cliff.

“Stop, Stop!” cried the growing crowd running forward.

“Never” yelled the two in unison, as they balled forward, like tumbleweed, dry and empty on the inside yet held together by the external superstructure in order to continue to function. “We are empty after that which we have seen and must die,” sadly thought the two men as they rolled.

These two will never function again after seeing what they had seen, and, out of necessity, both metaphorically, and physically, tumbled off the cliff into the sea.

That which has passed hence is to be remembered by none but those who were disengaged from the tale, because this sorrow is deeper than anything that can be read. For, seven people died that day, the last being a woman knocked unconscious during the beginning of this tale. She died alone that day, without notice, and without avail. All who die die for no avail.

Okay- first of all- I didn't finish this. It was a bit confusing for me to follow.
But some critiques on the writing style-

Tenses- You switched back and forth between past and present tense. This is a big no. You need to pick a tense, and stick with it. No interchanging between "was" and "is". It's one or the either. This is extremely important in writing. It can quite confusing if tenses are not used properly.

Telling, Not Showing- Okay- so telling is important. To be able to simply state the goings on in a story is very important. But so is the flowery language. There needs to be a balance. It's key for a good story.
Instead of simply stating, "Six bikers were run off road by semi." (which also needs an article before "semi"), why not putting something like, "Horns blared and skidding crashes ensued as the six bikers were thrown off road by a raging semi, scattering weeds like confetti."
That's not a good example. But you get the point. You need more description. Description is key. When you simply state something, it sounds like a police report- impersonal, unengaging.

Emotional Entanglement- I would try to develop the emotion in this to a greater degree. Two people just died... I see a lot of angry words, but nothing else. Describe the tears, the anguish, the absolutely HURT in the people involved. I don't want a baseball bat randomly being withdrawn. The trucker would feel remorse, even while attempting to distance himself from the crash. Even if he is drunk, does that make him a psychopath? You want the reader to be able to relate to each of these characters- that's what character development is, the very essence of it. You want every character to be real, no matter how minor. You want them to rounded well, be realistic, have real emotions, act naturally. This way, the reader can have deep emotions about all of them, whether they like them or not. They can relate to every one of them, connect to every single one them.

Grammar- Grammar, no matter how heated the moment is, is always needed. It is key, and will allow the reader to engage in the world you create without difficulty.



So- altogether- it looks like you have an interesting story.. intense scene. I would just work on the things I listed above a bit more, and I think it would great.
Hope I was able to help!

-Coral-

Okay, so you can see that this will need a little work. I think this is probably a rough draft, rather than something that you have really polished, so I'm going to go through it piece-by-piece to give you a better idea of where I'm getting hung up. I'm going to leave the grammar/syntax alone, though, with the assumption that you can repair this later on in your process.

Six bikers were run off road by semi. A man and a woman were dead, their motorcycles in ruins. There were still four bikers alive. One of those four was unconscious and badly hurt, her bike had been clipped by another thrown forward by the truck. The other three drive to the side of the road and stop, unharmed, except that some fragments of glass and debris had been thrown forward from the wrecks and one of the men had been cut on his face, and another deep into his arm. The three men survey the wreck, while the trucker gets out of his cabin. The healthy biker runs to the road in order to look for help

I have a few problems with your premise, most of which I think can be easily repaired by a little revision.

Firstly, I think you need to figure out the logistics of what's going on. Right now, your explanation of events is muddy, and I get the sense that it stems from your own vagueness here. What exactly happened? It's hard to run six motorcycles off the road at once, unless they are riding in blocks (that is, two in each lane), which is generally ill-advised on the highway.

I also think you have rushed through this. It reads a little like a machine gun. Characters! Scene! Set up! We have no emotional attachment to any of these characters, and since there is no emotion in the introductory section, the reader is already at a stark disadvantage.

“Why did you do that!” screeches the driver.

Hm. This guy has just killed two people, wounded another, and he's angry? I would be anxious to check on the riders, especially (as the driver of the semi) because I wouldn't know who was dead and who was alive. If I had a chance to help someone, or call 911, I would be all over it. Additionally, because most truckers carry radios and/or cell (or satellite) phones, he should really be taking care of that right away, instead of wandering out in a dazed stupor to start a fight with the bikers.

He yells in a fit of shock and blame, “you just murdered them, you just ran them off the road!” sobs the man whose arm has been cut. His mind begins to collapse in upon itself at the dreadfulness of that which had just occurred. The man looked through denial, grief, sorrow, sickness, anger, hatred, but never pity or forgiveness, for in this scene there is no forgiveness, only what passes.

You've stumbled over a gem at the very end of that last sentence. But you've just glossed over it. Your sentence structure is such that we miss it, time and time again. Get rid of the laundry list and work on your pacing. Let the man show us what's he's going through, instead of imagining that he's picking through a chunk of emotions. Imagine your own grief and amplify it--don't make up something new because the event seems to warrant it. This comes across as being unrealistic because it isn't tied to any real process.

“No I didn’t,” the truck driver, “you punks drove into me.”

Okay, even if I weren't at fault, here, my alarm bells would be going off. I've just killed a handful of people and I've got a very angry biker who is upset at me for a very good reason, and I'm yelling at him like a four-year-old?

“You did! You just did!” cries the cut-faced man.

Here is where we start to wonder why this guy is wasting his time. What about his wounded friend? Surely there is something he could be doing. Even without proper training, your average motorist knows his ABCs (that is, airway, breathing, circulation), and would be protecting his friend despite her unconcious state. Is she just chilling (unconcious) in the road somewhere?

“NO I DIDNT” yells the truck driver, grabbing a baseball bat from his cabin.

Whoa. Is he so eager to kill another guy? Especially because he may be charged with reckless homicide as it is? Even if he doesn't care about spending time in jail (or isn't thinking about it, presently), his denial doesn't seem to warrant a sudden aggressive motion toward the biker.

The cut-faced man is ruthlessly relentless. He is the leader of this group of bikers and has seen some terrible scenes on the road, but he has never had a situation like this. The newness of the graphics, in which two of his friends are dead, with another clinging to life, was hard to assemble inside his head, yet he was able to react in his usual slow, calculating manner, despite feeling disassembled from the inside by the tragedy of the scene.

You've slipped into past tense, here.

Slow calculation doesn't bring to mind sudden acts of violence. So it seems contradictory that you are slowing this guy down, picking apart his brain, and then slapping your hands and saying, "SO! Now he's going to go after this truck driver." His actions make more sense than the drivers, but they are still incongruous with the situation.

The cut-faced man grabbed his own baseball bat from the back of his motorcycle but kept it hidden. “This would be easy” he thought. “This trucker is an amateur.”

Have you ever tried to hide a baseball bat from anyone? Much less lug it around on your motorcycle for no apparent reason other than to wait for this exact situation? I would advise you to change the weapon here. A lot of bikers (and even some of your run-of-the-mill thugs) carry mag-lites (big, heavy flashlights). They're portable, you can clip them to a belt, they won't get you in trouble if somebody pulls you over, and they are handy for bludgeoning people to death.

“Dude, are you fucking drunk?” says the Man whose arm is still bleeding. He had spotted a whiskey bottle in the cab of the truck.

We're getting ready to attack when, suddenly, our eyes wander to the inside of the truck! Of course!

Only not really. This just seems odd. More likely they would smell whiskey on his breath as they approached, or notice a drunken demeanor. Also, where has this second man been throughout the altercation. It seems to me that he would either interceded during such a heated discussion, or get his two cents in.

The corpses on the ground gleamed back at the truck driver and for a second he shivered.

This makes it seem almost like he hasn't noticed the bodies before. You have taken us to the peak of your scene and then suddenly drained all the energy out of it. Try not to slow down, here. Everybody's hesitating and considering and noticing instead of rolling forward with the momentum you have created.

A trace of hesitation and the man whose arm was dripping switches his motorcycle into gear. The bike throws the trucker into confusion while he runs straight at the trucker who falls down, but is unharmed. But the driver doesn’t see that it has rained the night before and suddenly he cannot control his bike. He slips on the ground’s curvature and starts to slide. He trips and crashes and his bike starts to catch fire, he begins to burn. He’s smouldering, but already dead.

This reads a lot like your introduction. You are describing the events in such a hurried fashion that we have to read this over and over in order to understand it.

Additionally, what is going on? What is the biker doing? Driving away and leaving his unconcious friend to fend for herself? But then he's driving into the trucker for no apparent reason?

Your average motorcycle rider is also more than capable of controlling his vehicle in the event of wet roadways. And in any event, he was just riding down the highway (presumably with no issue until the accident). But he falls down at a slow speed on the shoulder? And dies? After catching fire (also for no apparent reason)?

About the catching fire--firstly, it's incredibly unlikely. Especially in a wet environment. And then, he just dies? Immediately? With no fuss? It takes quite a while for someone to die after being consumed by fire (in fact, people with burns over 90 percent of their body routinely live for a little while before infection and sepsis take hold and they die). If he dies from other injuries, please say so.

The cut-faced man, aware of the imminent implications upon his soul, which was bound to start a trek and to be driven further into the mind’s depths of pathos, and to eventually come to represent nothing but the horror of life, makes his move, in lieu of idleness, he grabs his baseball bat and strikes the trucker in the hand, causing him to drop his own baseball bat. Without a weapon, and at least 3 broken fingers, the trucker was helpless. He yelled in pain.

More misplaced imagery, here. Right at the point of action, you have slipped in some valuble philosophical mutterings, but they are lost in the scene that you have already created. It doesn't fit, and it tangles the reader. And then we are thrust right back into the moment, and hopelessly confused.

Additionally, has the trucker been sleeping this whole time? Presumably the pair is standing relatively far apart, but he just allows the bat-wielding biker to walk over and whack him in the hand?

“Why did you do that, I’ll kill you” he screams as he yells and starts to run to his truck.

"Why did you do that?" The trucker just killed a bunch of this biker's friends. All while roaring drunk! And he's running away? A minute ago he was ready to slaughter this guy.

“He’s going for a gun! He’s reaching for a gun” the biker imagines to his sheer terror; He has a mortal fear of guns.

A biker who routinely carries baseball bat and picks fights with angry truckers is terrified of guns? And who is he yelling at?

I suppose it's not so much that he -couldn't- be afraid of guns, but we know nothing of this biker that would suggest anything other than the stereotypical (and usually incorrect) violence that is inherant to the position. If you helped us to understand him a little better, the jumping around that you are doing here wouldn't be so disorienting.

The trucker reaches for his door but the cut-faced man is on him. It is now the two of them alone. The trucker tries to block but cannot. He is punched hard in the gut by a bat. The biker slaps the bat again, this time considerably harder. The hit sends the trucker to the ground with the violent impact of force.

Wait, the biker just poked him in the belly with the baseball bat? Why? The easiest thing to do (and the most appropriate) when you have a baseball bat, is to use it as intended. That means, at the very least, a swinging arc to the shoulder, neck, head, etc.

“Get the fuck down” in exasperation calls the violent attacker. “I don’t want to keep hurting you.”

He doesn't? Why not? He just attacked the man while he was attempting to escape, and now he's professing his innocence?

But the trucker wasn’t having any of it. He was wasted and out of control, he had run these people off the road on purpose. He wanted the biker to keep hurting him; he wanted the biker to kill him.

Okay, this would have been better to know early on. He was drunk, but even though he was drunk he also ran them off the road on purpose, and now he's feeling guilty. I've got that. But he's actions don't match the persona that you've pressed onto him. Instead, he just comes across as being bipolar--alternating between aggression and supplication.

He was at once a trucker and at last a nihilist. He had begun his journey with the knowledge that he had killed his wife and kids by accident, carrying in with him from a trip to South America a deadly pathogen that had slaughtered his lover and his baby girl. There was no god any longer for this man.

Alrighty. This seems incredibly expositional to me. It's a belated explanation for the trucker's violence against the bikers, whom he assumes (not erroneously), would be angry enough to kill him? Why not go off himself somewhere?

Additionally, when you go to a foreign country, they usually require you to be vaccinated against most highly-communicable diseases. I realize that this sort of thing happens, but it is extremely rare.

The South American trip was well paid and took him a few weeks out on the road but was enough to feed his family for the rest of the year. He returned home with a slight cough but it was nothing major. However, the cough had infected his family, and a week after he had returned they were dead.

And he wasn't?

“What world is this,” he long thought, “what world is this that can do such damage to such innocents for the sins of the guilty? Perhaps the guilty were meant to live in this hell and to continually suffer. Perhaps these men like I must walk through hell. Perhaps there is no salvation, and there is no god. For, he has killed my babies. There is no hope. All hope is dead. God has killed himself in front of me, just as I have killed myself in front of me, and I have killed my babies.”

This is oddly philosophical for a man who is about to be pummeled to death. You need a place to put all of his rambling, other than right in the middle of your key scene. Break it up or eliminate it instead of placing chunks of it in unwelcome places. You have just eliminated all the tension that you worked so hard to create, and now the reader is getting bored and resentful that you've pulled him away from the action.

“What god is this!” he shouted in agony at his controller, as he slowly backed away from the biker.

This man had spent the last month on a road trip, trying to control his pain. It had not worked, but only served to make him furious internally, for out on the road for hours alone is no consolation for pain. Being alone is not the solution to pain, for it is from being alone that pain is caused.

I don't know. Most people (myself included) find that a solitary existance is occasionally helpful when an extreme situation strikes. You might want to explain this a little better by putting it in context with the trucker's personality and individual circumstance.

He drove at speeds far exceeding the speed limit, yet he had never even seen a cop. He drove, and sped. Swerved, took crazy turns, and did whatever he felt like, for he had no mind left for himself to defend against the jarring rupture within him caused by the disjoining of the chords that were threaded and braided to build his heart; his wife and child were dead. It was his fault. He would let his shame, guilt, regret, and self-hatred destroy him from the inside because that was the only way in which life could balance itself out again. He was to be destroyed, he figured, physically and mentally, figuratively and literally; how else could there ever be peace without such a memory as mine dying.

In a semi? It wouldn't take long to kill someone else if he were really driving like that. Why didn't he just drive into a ravine.

For the past week he had gradually grown moodier and moodier, and could barely stand his surroundings, which were always changing. The people he saw were reminders of the joys that others can feel yet that he himself would never feel again.

“They must never know of my pain,” he thought “for the world is too corruptible, and the blackness brought forth by such events decreases our humanity.” He had once thought the opposite and that tragedy was a core component of human life, yet now he believed that some tales just aren’t meant to be told.

Here is where we start getting sick of this trucker's story. We really want to get back to the action, and it feels like you are just dragging it out for no apparent reason. We don't really need to know all about his descent into depression and eventual suicide-by-biker. We want you to show us how he's feeling by way of his actions.

He resolved to end his story. He drove for the past fifteen hours, loaded on whiskey. The intoxicant coursed through his veins and pierced his thoughts. They were dulled further and further, and he grew more resolute, more secured of his absolution in death. Not his peace through religious absolution, no, for him there would be no peace. But in absolution, he would be abolished. “This is what must be;” he thought “the ending that comes forth is of necessity.”

Don't say "intoxicant." Alcohol is a depressant and the other way just sounds uneducated (in my opinion).

This seems uncharacteristically poetic of a drunken truck driver.

A few minutes before the start of this scene, he drove at a fast speed, drunk. He was looking for a way to die. He spotted the bikers up a few kilometres away. He drove fast to catch them.

"They will kill me if I disturb them,” he thought.

How does he know this? 99 percent of bikers wouldn't raise a hand against you if you ran them off the road, much less murder you. Were they wearing patches (indicating allegiance to a certain gang of potential notoriety)?

And we still, as readers, can't understand why he has picked this as a way to die. Couldn't he just drive himself off a cliff or, if he was bent on murdering someone else in the process, crash headlong into another semi? If he really wanted to off himself, there are easier ways to do it.

He barrelled forward, as if in a stagecoach, or hansom cab pulled by a large team of powerful horses that once finished their journey, died. He flew along the highway; he was pushed forward by a sense of urgency, an internally created pressure to create chaos and havoc upon himself.

This would have been great if you hadn't put it smack in the middle of a long diatribe. You're going back in time and describing everything over. We already know what happened! Don't draw it out and make the reader keep waiting.

“How do I get them to kill me?” he asked, to himself. He was slightly dreary due to his deadly combination of sleep depravity, his alcohol intake, his exhaustion, and the pain of his internal thoughts. He sped up trying to cut them off through the middle, to cause them to go off to the side of the road where he could then aggravate them enough to kill him. He had planned to go up, yet, when his foot slipped, he clipped the back two riders and through one of those two into another.

This sounds strangely lucid for someone who is completely trashed.

Additionally, it seems far-fetched to me that this guy would know what he was doing. Maybe subconciously, he wants to be dead. Maybe that's why he's driving aggressively. But few people, entrenched in grief, would psychoanalyze themselves enough that they could say, "I want somebody to kill me" without having the strength (cowardice) to do it themselves.

They tumbled, the front three stopped. He stopped and got out of his vehicle.

"Kill me. Do it. End me or I will kill you like I kill anything that comes near me.“ speaks the beaten trucker, a little while later. He had a broken hand but crawled pitifully away, clutching at dirt. He was dragging himself to the other side of the truck. He ran round but was too slow. The cut-faced man hit him in the shoulder again. There was a loud crack and the trucker screamed in pain. He had run to the truck door to make the remaining biker think that he was trying to escape. Instead, the biker thought it was a much more serious problem, a gun.

How would he manage a crawl on a broken hand?

“So,” he thought “this is how I will die. One man alone with a baseball bat will kill me. Good. I’m glad he thinks I’m a killer. I am a killer. I have now killed four people, and my sins will die with me. I am assured to go to hell now and I will. I must. I have to. I should. I will. For, the fires of hell are all that can purify me now.”

The trucker continued towards the cab door. “I will kill you, like I killed the rest of them” he shouted.

“Do not talk about the others. All three of them did not deserve to die.”

“I claim no responsibility for your dare-devil friend, what he did was his choice and I will not pay for that sin as well.”



“He was trying to stop you, you disgrace” screamed the biker and he bashed the trucker’s kneecap.

This is preachy. And it's tedious to read for that very reason. The tension is gone out of this scene.

“I killed them” screamed the man who would never walk again. “I killed them all and I do not apologize. I deserve no forgiveness. Oh god, if you were so great as to allow this to happen to me, I will pay for my sins in hell, rather than follow your word any longer, for your greatness is unacceptable to me any longer. If you had only stepped in, I would still be faithful. But you refuse, and for that, I have doomed myself.”

“Stop your fucking madness you fucking murdering piece of shit” contemptuously and insolently roared the cut-faced biker with a darkening expression and the hint of the beginnings of moral disease in his eyes.

He swung the bat down again, and hit the man in the face.

The trucker’s nose exploded and, losing consciousness, he falls hard to the cement. His last thoughts were blank, as if no man existed at all to see his life story pass before his eyes in the last moments before his death. Perhaps there had never been these thoughts, or perhaps, more likely, they had been played long ago when he had really died.

The man swung the bat again, and a cracking of skull signified death. Another bash and another crack, and this time larger, more devastating, splitting of the skull revealed the horrors within the depths of the human brain. He hit, and hit, and cracked the trucker’s face and skull into a paste. Nobody was there to stop him until suddenly he is thrown backwards with a tackle by the uninjured man. He has returned. There are three cops, a medical team, and other helpers running to the scene but they are too far behind. The uninjured man had driven to the nearest town to fetch them and they had returned just in time to see the biker killing the trucker. Oh but what their angle of perception must have shown them.

What would they have seen? A biker killing a trucker who has just run his friends over? Surely that wouldn't be such a surprise. Also, why is everyone running? A cop would stay in his car, a medical team (following protocol and the logistics for removing injured person[s]) would be in their ambulance until arriving on scene. Otherwise you are just adding potential casualties.

Another thing, and this is just me being picky, I think, but you wouldn't actually be able to see his brain after mashing him twice with the bat. Head wounds bleed copiously, and (excuse the graphicness here), blood would be spurting from his head and would marr the view of anyone attempting actually see inside.

The uninjured man jumped atop the cut-faced man. “Why did you do that!” interrogated the uninjured man, “he should be in jail, not dead.” He grasped the cut-faced man tight, in a position resembling a hug.

“He deserved to die, and he was going for his gun” grunted the man on the bottom, who, pulling the uninjured man, a large biker, over in a rolling motion, they tumbled. He was an even larger biker, and had the strength to begin a roll. They rolled, and rolled, until they were clasped in a deep, deep hug. The two men were close friends, and the death of three of their friends would not be repressed, sublimated, or normalized, and neither will be able to disassociate themselves with this moment the rest of their lives. They rolled and rolled, and as the onlookers viewed the scene the men were rolling, tumbling, and gliding gracefully down a hill towards a cliff.

Whoa. Strategically-placed cliff.

Also. At this point, the police officers who are hanging around wouldn't just be standing there. They would have arrived with the second biker and would be assessing the situation (and, in all probability, detaining the first biker). They would by no stretch of the imagination stand gaping while a pair of men roll (????) toward a cliff at the edge of the highway.

“Stop, Stop!” cried the growing crowd running forward.

Crowd from where?

“Never” yelled the two in unison, as they balled forward, like tumbleweed, dry and empty on the inside yet held together by the external superstructure in order to continue to function. “We are empty after that which we have seen and must die,” sadly thought the two men as they rolled.

This is. Well. Unbelievable. Unrealistic. "Never"? Why? Suddenly everyone's committing suicide? Why not just attack a cop and get yourself detained (and/or shot, depending on how high strung that particular officer happens to be)? Instead, the two bikers grab onto each other and roll over to a cliff? It doesn't make sense, logistically. Have you ever tried to roll anywhere, especially while attached to another person? You won't get very far.

These two will never function again after seeing what they had seen, and, out of necessity, both metaphorically, and physically, tumbled off the cliff into the sea.

The sea's there too? That is conveniant.

Anyway, plenty of people continue living after seeing much worse. I don't think I understand exactly what is going on here.

That which has passed hence is to be remembered by none but those who were disengaged from the tale, because this sorrow is deeper than anything that can be read. For, seven people died that day, the last being a woman knocked unconscious during the beginning of this tale. She died alone that day, without notice, and without avail. All who die die for no avail.

This reads like a footnote. "Oh, yea, and that other lady died too."

So, clearly, this could use an overhaul. But parts of your action scenes read nicely, and I think maybe you could rework this to make it into something worthwile.

Keep writing!

Fuck man.. I just spent like an hour typing out stuff, and then hit the damn back button.

anyways, Thanks for the replies, this is my weakest story for sure, so I figured i'd post it first.

You need to suspend your disbelief just a bit more on a few things, and I could see this story making a bit more sense to you. I'll change some stuff up as well, thanks.