TITLE: The Reckoning
GENRE: Horror/Apocalypse
Jessica Newton was midway through her first toke of the night when she saw it high over the treetops. It was moving fast, on a northwest to southeast course. At first, she thought it was an airplane, a 747 streaking across the night sky on its way east, but the color -- a strange and unusually bright tinge of purple -- seemed wrong. More troubling, the object was losing altitude, and quickly. Although the night was warm, thick with humidity, she felt the hair on her arms stand at attention. She coughed into her hand, sending a puff of thick white smoke swirling around her face like she was the wicked witch of the West. Her eyes watered and burned, and she felt a little bit queasy.
"What's that?" she asked her boyfriend of six weeks, Lonnie Gaston, as she handed the roach back to him. "What's what?" Lonnie asked, not really paying attention to her. He took a long drag, expertly capturing the smoke and then holding his breath.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, careful not to lose her cool with Mr. Lonnie Gaston, who was proving to be a bit of a hothead and not as charming as advertised, notwithstanding his bitchin' hair, and a bit of a hothead. She had no desire to take another right cross to the cheek.
"That," she said, gently turning his stubbly chin in the direction of the as-yet-unidentified object. "There."
Ooh, what's there?! Yep, you've got my attention. You've also made me already dislike Mr. Lonnie Gaston. I'm kind of hoping that he's the first one to get it in the "reckoning."
ReplyDeleteOooh, I like this! I really like the description - I can feel the humidity and smell the smoke around her face. And I agree with Andria - I already dislike Lonnie.
ReplyDeleteThe only part that caught me up was: "who was proving to be a bit of a hothead and not as charming as advertised, notwithstanding his bitchin' hair, and a bit of a hothead." Maybe put the bitching hair part in parenthesis?
I would definitely read on.
ReplyDeleteI'm definitely intrigued to read more. Cool story. The first paragraph seemed a little long to grab onto my attention - if it had been split into two paragraphs, it would have been easier on my attention-deficit reading disorder.
ReplyDeleteThe use of "it" so many times in the first part threw me a little. I wanted more of a description.
ReplyDeleteI would totally read more, however.
I would read on. I agree with Nobu's comment about the use of 'it' in the opening paragraph. I found 'it' a little distracting. :)
ReplyDeleteI like it and I want to read on.
ReplyDeleteThis is great.
ReplyDeleteI'm picturing the scene as if I'm at the movies.
Hooked!
:)
It could just be that it's late, and my brain isn't processing as fast as it could be, but the repetition of "a bit of a hot head" in the second to last paragraph threw me for a loop. I've reread it a few times, and am still a bit confused as to what is being said.
ReplyDeleteOther than that I'd probably read on, though I'm not much of a horror/apocalypse reader. I love the phrasing "as-yet-unidentified object." It makes me hope that soon it will be identified.
I liked this except for the 3rd paragraph, which I would dump.
ReplyDeleteNot really hooked, I'm afraid. The writing could do with a lot of tightening. You use a lot of 'was', which isn't automatically wrong but is usually a good sign that it could use some editing, and there's also some telling going on--"her boyfriend of six weeks", "proving to be a bit of a hothead", etc. Try to immerse yourself more in the character, compose sentences as she would, and smoothen your sentences over. Take out unnecessary words. The description of the purple for instance - 'unusually bright purple' would do fine. We assume it's strange because it's unusually bright. We also don't need all of the dialogue tags.
ReplyDeleteThe sentences also tend to be kind of long--variation is good. Short sentences tend to work better in tense/action scenes, so you might want to try and sprinkle in a few of those if you want to speed this scene up (which I think would benefit it).,
Lastly, the comment about his bitchin' hair seemed very out of place, and you repeat the bit about him being a hothead.
Anyway, you do have an interesting start with the thing crashing, so with some tightening I'm sure this could end up working great! Good luck.
Will these slacker kids be the protagonists or are they just observers of the invasion?
ReplyDeleteEither way, I'm not intrigued and probably wouldn't read much further.
Also, you jumped from one of the character's POV to the other, which can work but tends to not.
ReplyDeletenice!
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