TITLE: Murphy's Law
GENRE: Paranormal Mystery
Murphy McEvoy's young son drown when he fell asleep while babysitting. This scene is from one his of nightmares.
The skin of the baby at her bare breast was tinged green with decay. It was dead. She didn’t seem to notice or care and kept rocking the small corpse in her arms stroking its matted hair.
When I looked back at the plates, large black ants glistening in the sun like fresh watermelon seeds swarmed over the food. I took a drumstick and tried to shake them off. They crawled onto my arm instead, attacking my skin with fierce looking mandibles. My flesh burned. I ran to the waters edge to drown them. As I approached, I saw what looked like loose white corks torn from a fisherman’s net bobbing near the shore, hundreds of them. When I drew closer, I saw they weren’t corks at all. They were bodies, children’s bodies, twisted, maimed, without color.
A growing roar filled my ears. Water quickly drew back from the shore. On the horizon, a giant wave swelled taller than a building. In its face thousands of young corpses churned. I turned and ran. As I passed the blanket, I yelled to Penny. She didn’t respond, still devotedly nursing the dead child. The distance quickly grew between us, but still I couldn’t run fast enough. The wave kept growing and gaining. It crashed down blasting me off my feet, crushing my chest, twisting my body around like a horrid amusement park ride. High above through a mountain of water, the sun flickered a small bright dot
Miss Snark's First Victim
Wow. This is sad. Every parents' fear. The first paragraph was chilling.
ReplyDeleteI got a little confused by the plates. I suppose that's part of the problem with dropping into a scene although that sentence is slightly clumsy. I like the image of the watermelon seeds but it does break the flow.
The same with the "fierce looking mandible." I think attacking my skin is enough, especially with "my flesh burned."
The rest just pulls me right back in- as I said- chilling.
I think I would leave out the "It was dead." in the first paragraph. Your description is great and you make it clear that the baby is dead.
ReplyDeleteI was a little confused by the plate too but dreams (at least mine) are often disjointed.
Creepy!
What susiej said. Several nice turns of phrase, especially the description of the ants.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few places where a comma is needed. The end of the first paragraph seems to indicate the dead baby is stroking its own hair, for example. A comma after arms would clarify.
I'd also watch the adjectives; a wave taller than a builing would have to be giant, if you're referring to a skyscraper. If you mean a garden shed, though, giant seems a tad much. Better to indicate how big a building you had in mind, and forget calling it giant.
Overall, very nicely done, though.
I thought this was a nicely written excerpt, although I honestly wasn't sure where the "over-the-top emotion" was. In fact, I didn't really get a sense of emotion at all. The dream is definitely very creepy and chilling, but I got no real sense about how the MC feels about what she's seeing. I just re-read and I think the only example of how the MC is affected by all this was the fact that "[her] flesh burned".
ReplyDeleteGiven the extreme emotional significance of the dream to the MC, I would've liked to have seen a bit more horror and dread on her part. As it stands this is really just a narrative description of a bad dream, and I have no idea if the MC is horrified, excited, or indifferent about the whole thing. I can guess, of course, but it'd be better if I didn't have to.
Having said all that, I think this is a good, descriptive piece of writing. I'm critiquing based on the theme of this "Drop the Needle", emotion, and that's where the biggest deficiency lies. So take my comments for what they're worth. :)
Ditto what Meghan said.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, Meghan, MC is male, not female. :)
Oops! :) I see the "he" in the description now.
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ReplyDeleteDisturbing stuff. I like it.
ReplyDeleteNo need for the "It was dead," IMO. Either get rid of it altogether or you could move the "dead" bit to the first sentence: The skin of the dead baby at her bare breast was tinged green with decay.
You've got food and a green baby. You could give the readers a little whiff of what that's like.
You could also choose one of "care" or "notice" instead of having both. No biggie.
Matted hair? Great stuff.
Anchor the reader to what the plates are and rearrange the simile so it makes better sense. For example: When he looked back at the plates on the checkered picnic blanket, black ants swarmed over the food and glistened in the sun like fresh watermelon seeds.
Good simile, although I'm not sure black ant bites burn. Fire ants, I know for sure do.
There's a lot of good stuff. My main worry is that this seems to try to do too much in too few words. I'd like you to develop this piece over twice, thrice the word count. This felt rushed. Take your time. Make us experience each terrified step.
Good luck.
I think this is nice, descriptive writing, but I don't feel connected to anything. This is simply a (nicely done) description of a dream. How does it affect the plot, characters, etc.? Based on the writing style, I'm guessing that the rest is well written (a few punctuation errors aside!) and I'd read a bit more, but if I didn't get pulled into some reality soon, I'd stop reading.
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