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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

30 Drop The Needle TENSION

TITLE: Dream of Wolves
GENRE:Paranormal/SciFi

A fight breaks out on the train Gray is riding on. She is trapped in the bathroom by a hungry ghoul.


A distorted face pressed through the crack above the arm, a string of greenish drool hanging from the open mouth. One dark eye stared, pupil dilated and slightly hazy.

Screaming, Gray scrambled back only to come up against the toilet. The ghoul’s fingers stretched and it pressed its face tighter through the opening, its cheeks tearing with the force and exposing rotted muscle and a hint of gray bone. Teeth clench tight it pushed harder against the door and the metal groaned under the weight of the creature trying to get in.

"No, no, no,” Gray whispered, panic reaching in to steal any rational thought she might have. Pushing herself up she crouched on the toilet, eyes wide and feeling slightly sick. The arm was reaching, the face pressing close, and all she could smell was the sweetly-sick scent of death.

The blinking, twinkling red light of the panic button finally caught her eye. She stood carefully on the toilet, rocking with the train as it continued to race down the tracks, indifferent to the battle raging inside.

The ghoul followed her movement, rising out of its own crouch and pulling its ruined face out of the door. Gray leaned forward, still standing on the toilet, and carefully lifted the plastic cover over the button. The ghoul’s eyes watched each movement hungrily. With another scream Gray slammed her hand over the panic button.

11 comments:

  1. This is good. The ghoul is positively disgusting :)

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  2. This is horribly wonderful. I do expect she's going to squeeze down the toilet (somehow). But all the same I'm leaning to the side away from the green ghoul drool. :)

    One question... how big is this bathroom? I have a mental image of the standard closet bathroom... which means that the reaching hand might be able to grab her...

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  3. Great! I can picture this very clearly from your writing!

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  4. Very vivid! Creepy and gross...and tense. Nicely done.

    But with all those descriptions I wonder, doesn't the ghoul make any ghoulish sounds? And why 'carefully' lifting the plastic cover? I would think quicker, more panicked actions like flipping or flicking it.

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  5. good job - very tense indeed. Good description of the ghoul, I was properly horrified and disgusted. I don't like the line "panic reaching in to steal any rational thought she might have" because I'd rather get a sense of this from her thoughts and body - like she starts to shake so that her whole body trembles, things like that. But otherwise, great tension.

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  6. The ghoul is great. Well done, good tension. I can't see how she'll get away.

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  7. This was really good. I've read it twice and each time I have enjoyed it. I really want to know what the ghoul is about to do

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  8. Oh no! Not trapped in the bathroom! The living room, the dining room, even the bedroom...but not the bathroom! You fiend! Have you no shame?

    Ahem. Sorry. Had to find something besides the ghoul to focus on. Ew.

    How could a reader not be tense after reading this? One question, though: Once the ghoul squeezes its way into what seems to be an unnaturally large bathroom for a train, he just watches Gray? Is he someone's pet ghoul? I thought the tension decreased a bit there, even though the ghoul was watching "hungrily." My advice to the ghoul: Do not waste time, buddy. Your days are numbered as it is.

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  9. Great job on tension and scaring the buggers out of me! I really didn't care for the creature's face peeling off, but it added a nice touch for the gross and eww factor.

    Good job.

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  10. I like the detail.

    I'm not in love with the word "only" when she runs into the toilet. I think you could rephrase that to be a bit more immediate.

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  11. It’s good, and the tension is clear, but I think at some points it gets overly verbose. Also, I think there’s a typo in: “Teeth clench tight it pushed harder against the door…”

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