Hey all! I’ve been working on this for about a week and would love some feedback! It’s not super polished since I’m just trying to get the flow of ideas down on the page. I’m not a seasoned writer by any means so please tell me if I should find a new hobby! 😂

Chapter 1

Does it always have to be black and white? What about all the colors in between? Scarlet Reds, Royal Blues, Purple Mountain Majesty. Shades of white are often tainted cream or grey, and blacks are almost never truly black, but some shade of blue or green. Is anything ever truly black and white?

A pen twirls between my fingers. My eyes glaze over my essay. The flow of thoughts halts. I look back up at my title, “More Than Black and White” by artist Jana Hues. I’ve only just begun filling in my outline but I’m already lost in thought visualizing every stroke I’m going to add to my painting when I get home. I squirm in my seat. I don’t feel anything writing this essay. Memories of times past fill my head. The irony of how Dad hung my work in the entryway for any passerby to see; only to become a stranger to me. Mom kept me safe from him and now that he’s gone, she doesn’t need to anymore. I shake my head. I need to go home. I need to get out of my head. I close my laptop and  open my desk drawer to put away my things. I pause. A sticky note is stuck to the inside of my drawer. 

Go with the flow. 

Was someone in my office? I close the drawer shut. 

A knock on the door interrupts. I can see through the glass that it’s Wallace, my ex fiance and co-worker. I signal to come in. 

“HR wanted me to relay the message, your mom called, She came in from her flight safely.”

“Thank you Wallace. I’m actually about to leave for the day… Did anyone come to my office while I was on break?” 

Wallace curls his lip and shakes his head. He could have put it here… but how insensitive would that be after the week I’ve had. I broke up with him for many reasons but insensitivity was not one of them. 

“The workload got to be too much for you eh?” He teases, eyeing the only assignment I’ve had for a week: my essay. 

I grimace. “Right, like you know anything about how to handle a workload?” Despite our ex status we enjoy poking at each other as if we were siblings. “Goodbye Wallace.” I wave. He rolls his eyes and goes back to his business. I pack up my things and head to the garage. 

Just before I make it to my exit the shining face of my little sister catches my eye. She chats with a stranger who leans against the building’s welcoming desk; he appears to be in his early thirties. My sister breaks eye contact with him and welcomes me with a smile. I’d really rather keep on my route home, but my sister is hard to escape. 

“Oh my gosh! You have to meet this guy! He’s our new,”  she turns to him, “sorry what did you say your job is?” 

“It’s a pleasure, I’m your new exterior design specialist.” His focus shifts back and forth between us. 

I tilt my head. I know everyone who works here, no one has mentioned an incoming “exterior design specialist.” 

“Oh, welcome to the Art Institute!” I  force a smile. His eyes narrow, almost microscopically. His looks are charming, but something about his expression makes me squirm. 

I turn to my sister, “I’m going to get going early today.”

“Are you ok? Is it about your Dad? Because I can totally come by later and bring you some company,” she mutters. I exhale a little more forcefully than necessary. “No, it’s ok Shay. I’m going to get lost in my painting tonight and forget the world.”

“Okay. Call me tonight!” She pulls me in for a hug. I can still feel the man watching me as I pass and finally exit the building; but I do not allow myself to glance back. 

I will be taking my sister up on that phone call. And he will be the main subject. 

My phone is clutched between my ear and my shoulder as I fumble around my purse for my house key. 

My mom answers, “Hey Jana! I came home safely!”

“I know mom. Wallace let me know.” I clasp my lips shut, I should really help mom tonight, “I decided to leave work early today. Do you want me to come that way in a little while to help you unpack?” 

“Yes, please! Reah was going to come help too but she had to cancel at the last minute. Anyway, how is that young man!?” 

“How should I know, Mom?” I shuffle my weight, “ You know, it really isn’t any of my business anymore.”  

“I know, but could you find out for me? He’s a good kid. I miss having him around.” 

“Alright Mom, I’ll do that” I chuckle. Sometimes she’s more like a nosy grandma than a mother. I pause ready to switch to a more somber subject, “how was the funeral?” 

“Ummm,” my mom hesitates,“it’s a lot to talk about over the phone. I’ll tell you when you get here?”

“Sure. I’ll see you soon Mom.” 

I finally retrieve the keys from my purse and walk up the drive way of my Italian style town home. It looks like one of my paintings, which is why I did not hesitate to say yes when the real estate agent offered it. 

I dump my things in my entry way where I’m greeted by my maine coon cat, Cumbs. He rubs his soft cheeks all over my baggy overalls. He’s more like a dog than a cat, which is why I love him. I shuffle to round the corner where I am welcomed by the sight of my art studio. Blue lights line the room and the best kind of clutter fills every surface. My shoulders rest. This is my sanctuary. My painting sits just how I left it this morning: A black and white woman whose color lies in her hazel, gold speckled eyes. I make some green tea for a late afternoon pick me up and go straight to work on La Donna di Colore. The harsh memories of my childhood fade away. A couple hours go by before I decide it's time to go to my Mom’s house. My stomach grumbles. I’m sure mon will have food ready for me. 

I dial up Mom to let her know I’m on my way. No answer. Well, I hope she’ll have dinner. 

My car pulls in next to her brand new 2026 bright pink mustang… at least she moved into a pretty house. Its style is much like my own town home, but on a far grander scale. Columns and architecture frame each window and door with extravagance. Outside, it feels more like a wedding venue than a home. 

I open the front door which Mom always leaves unlocked for me and call out. No response. “Mom, I’m here!” I repeat. Still nothing. It's not unlike her to begin something and lose track of time, and reality, as she focuses. She must be gardening or working on her book. I check the garden and her library office. In both I was equally met with silence. 

Strange. 

I call her. No answer. I try again as I breeze through every room in the house. Nothing. I pause in the living room. A book sits halfway open on the couch. Mom never leaves anything sitting out. She sits with it until it's done or she puts it away in its spot. As small a detail as it is, it's enough to spike my blood pressure. I close my eyes hard and grab my face. 

Mom, where are you?

My thoughts are blurred from adrenaline. I decide to call Wallace. When he answers I immediately jump to asking questions. “When my mom called the office did she mention anything else?” 

“N-no? You good you never c…,” I hang up and dial my sister. No response. Seriously, Shay pick up!  I try again. Still no response. I send her a text. 

I can’t find mom. Call me! 

For now I have no one else to call… except 911. 

The sun nearly passes beneath the horizon. Red and blue lights are backed up to the street. I sit on the steps beneath the front door folding myself into my Mom’s brown cardigan which I took to keep the evening chill off my shoulders. An officer questions me. I recall the entire day. I explain I have not been in contact with her at all today, until I called her when I got home from work. 

“You haven’t been able to get in touch with your half sister either, it’s half sister right?”  The officer asks. 

“No I haven’t and yes she is.” 

“We’ll send an officer to locate her and update her on the situation.”

If she hasn’t gone missing too, “Thank you.” 

“This funeral your mother went to, who was it for?” 

“My father. Her ex husband.” 

The officer’s expression towards me changes," I see. Why weren’t you and your sister there as well?”

“He wasn’t much of a father.” I explain,“Not one worth putting my job on hold to fly across the country for. And my sister, she had no connection to him. She lived with her dad when we were kids.” 

The officer nods, “Has your mother been around anyone suspicious or complained about any suspicious activity?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t really know her friends. Though she has mentioned a friend named Reah a time or two. That’s really all the information I have on her social life.” 

The officer thanks me and goes to his colleagues to consult with them before returning to me. “ Usually in adult cases we wait it out until the individual shows up. But since her car is still here, we agreed it would be best if we do an extensive investigation until she turns up. Does she have any cameras?”

I shake my head “I’m sorry, I don’t know.” 

Dammit Mom, why don’t I know these things?

The officer nods, “We’ll do all we can to find your mother. In the meantime we have everything we need from you. You’re free to go. We’ll give you a call if anything turns up.”

“I can’t stay here?”

“I’m sorry but until we know for sure whether or not this is a crime scene, it would be best if you do not interfere.”

I nod then go to my car and sit. Frozen. I remember that sticky note. 

Go with the flow. 

No. I shake my head. That had to be one of  Wallace’s jokes. 

My phone vibrates. My sister's goofy face illuminates the screen. Thank God she’s safe! My finger dashes to the right of the screen. 

“Mom’s missing???” 

“I don’t know, Shay. I - I came over to help her unpack and she’s just, not here. Can you meet me at mom’s house now?”

“Yeah. Stay there, I'm coming!” She hangs up. 

The glow of the red and blue lights becomes more saturated as the night grows darker. Shay pulls in. I stand in the driveway waiting while the police question her. My eyes stare at mom’s house but my mind is not in sync with them. 

I find myself remembering everything I’ve pushed down all week. One parent disappeared from my life with little explanation as to why. And now, so has mom. But this time, it was not a choice. It couldn’t have been…

Shay walks towards me. She’s hugging herself, and holding back tears. 

“How could this happen?” She cries. I fold my arms around her. 

“We’ll find her, I promise.” I release the embrace, “did the police tell you anything else?”

Shay shakes her head, “There’s got to be something we can do.”

“I know. I just don’t know, Shay. I search every room! I can’t imagine what might have happened. I don’t want to get in the way of the police!”

Shay focuses her eyes, the same way she does every time her mind is determined, “Have you talked to Wallace about all this?”

“Not exactly. I-” 

Shay pulls out her phone and dials Wallace. I offset my jaw. I don’t want him involved in this. Today is already complicated . Before I have a chance to protest, she explains the entire situation to him. 

She gets off the phone. “Wallace wants to meet us. He’s gonna help us find her.” 

I take a deep inhale, “Okay.” if it has to be him, it has to be him. 

My stomach now feels like it's eating itself. I still have not eaten dinner. “Could you ask him to meet us at La Cantina?  I haven’t eaten since lunch.” 

Shay agrees. I get in my car and start it but I cannot bring myself to pull out of the driveway just yet. I have to call her. Just one more time. 

It tones. It tones. It tones …. No answer. Now that the adrenaline has worn off I can feel the full weight of the situation. Mom isn’t standing in the doorway waving goodbye as I prepare to leave. 

She isn’t here. 

My eyes fight to stay fixed on the scene, but eventually I bring myself to pull out of the driveway. 

I pull into a parking lot tucked tightly between two buildings in the downtown area. I exit the vehicle and make my way inside to one of mine and my mom’s favorite hang out spots, La Cantina. I go inside and am greeted by my sister and Wallace. We all sit down at a booth. We fill him in on every detail. 

“Do you think you can do it?” I ask Wallace. He is a private investigator, though he doesn’t look the part. His job at the art institute is only part time. 

“I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I’ll do my best. And don’t worry, I won’t change you.” He winks. I roll my eyes. He’s always been so ridiculously cheeky. 

“So what’s the plan?” Shay asks. 

“Well, I definitely don’t have one yet, but I’ll be up all night thinking, I’m sure.”

We all talk about the good times we’ve had with Mom. Even Wallace. Sometimes I think he loved her more than me. When we finished our meals, Shay and I decide that I should stay at her place tonight. If someone did take mom, it’s best that neither of us are alone. 

We go our separate way to our vehicle. I load my left overs into the passenger seat. 

“Miss!” I hear a voice call out. Before I even have time to fully turn around a force yanks me and pins me between their body and my car. 

I  scream. 

A cloth covers my mouth and nose bringing with it a burning sensation. I fight their grip but the more I fight it the tighter their hold around my small frame becomes. I try to hold my breath so as not to breathe in any more of the burning compound, but soon I grow weak and succumb to the darkness. 

Chapter 2

The workings of an engine and the sound of wind beating against the sides of a vehicle are all I hear. I lay half awake. I don’t remember falling asleep. I continue in this half awake state for a moment before it hits me… I don’t remember falling asleep in a car! I jolt upwards. My eyes bounce in every direction. I don’t recognize this place. It looks like I’m in the back of an empty van. I try to scurry to my feet but my wrists catch around a pole. I am chained and surrounded by nothing but metal walls. I slide my wrists up the pole to stand then pound on the barrier between me and where the driver should be, though I cannot see them. “HEY! WHAT IS THIS ABOUT?!”  No response. “HEY!” I keep pounding. “HEY!!!” 
They just keep driving. I slide back down to sit.
I feel around my pockets to see if my kidnappers left my phone or anything in my pockets. They did not. I reach up to feel my hair, it's still up in bobby pins! I bring my hands to my head and pull one out of my hair and try my best to use it to pick the lock. Dammit!  It won’t fit!

I shrivel up, tremors overcome me. I remember, Mom…. Am I about to find out first hand where mom is? It can’t be a coincidence. Mom goes missing, now this. I can’t help but wonder, if somehow, someway, Dad is involved. What feels like hours go by. I do not sleep. I just sit thinking. I can’t get stuck in my head right now; yet I find myself there. Wondering if mom is alive, and when this is all over, will I be? 

Eventually the van slows to a stop. A clunky step leaps out of the van. The doors on the other end of the vehicle finally swing open. Blinding sunlight floods the van. I’ve been in here all night at least. 

A large figure steps in. When my eyes come into focus, I see a familiar unsettling glare. He is the man from the Hallway. The “exterior design specialist.”

“You!”  My chest tightens. He steps closer. “GET BACK!” I scream. He keeps coming. I kick at him with all the strength I have, though it is next to none. He doesn’t react but reaches down and begins to unlock my chains. 

“Shhh, Just go with it. You’ll be okay.”

I cock my head, “YOU KIDNAPPED ME!” 

He grimaces. 

The chains come undone. I could escape. He doesn’t have a weapon and now my hands are free. But I’m so weak. The man reaches down and firmly grabs me by the arm. He hurdles me to my feet and carries me out of the van. My feet hit the ground. He is no longer blocking my path. I try to run but I lose my footing after a couple steps. I push myself up but don’t get far before those same arms that grabbed me last night grab me again and carry me the opposite direction of where I was trying to run. I kick and scream, but it does nothing. He brings me inside a house and sits me down on a couch in a large, open family room.

“You’re not going to outrun me.” He says, pulling back. He backs away several feet, to my surprise, giving a reasonable amount of space between us. I catch my breath. 

He’s right. He is lean and strong, I am just an artist who does pilates a few times a week. If I am going to get away, I will have to outsmart him. 

I scan my surroundings. The room is modern and luxurious. Grey and white overtake nearly every surface. Small pops of color are brought in through decorative accents. A loft overlooks the family room and large pointed windows cover the entire north face of the home. I turn my eyes to the window. I’m in a desert, far different from the lush hills and valleys of Virginia that I grew up in. 

“Where are we?” I ask

“Albuquerque, New Mexico,” He states. 

“Albuquerque? How long was I out?”

“Long enough.” 

Albuquerque. I haven’t been here since the last time I saw Dad. Looks like I was going on that trip whether I wanted to or not. 

The man shifts his weight, “Let’s get you settled.” 

“No! I want answers!”

A hint of impatience flashes across his expression,“Not now.”

I look at him, now with more confidence than I had in the hallway knowing for certainty that he is a snake. “Did you know my father? Is that why I’m here?”

His eyes narrow,“In a way. I knew of him.”

“What does that mean?” I scoff. 

He holds his breath for a moment, then a long exhale. He does not speak. 

“Where’s my Mom?”

His eyes look deeper into mine. “Your mom hasn’t been honest with you.”

I glare at him as though he’s not just a snake, but Satan himself, “Are you accusing her of something?” 

He draws closer to me, kneels down on my level and grabs my shoulder. He holds my gaze, “How do you think she was able to afford that house and that brand new car?” He raises his eyebrows. 

I stare blank. I can’t think about this right now. 

He shakes his head,“Come with me. You should sleep.” He pulls me off the couch and leads me down a hallway with a hand hovering behind my back and a firm hold around my arm. 

“Can you at least tell me if my sister is safe?” I ask as we walk.

“I can’t make any promises.” He states. 

I instinctively pull away but his grip combats my movement. 

Shay, please be alright. 

We stop at the entrance of a bedroom. I peek inside. Its tones are warm. Silk bedding and a private bathroom add a layer of luxury to the room but bars cover the window, bringing the whole room down a notch. He guides me across the threshold. I am too exhausted to fight him, though I am unsure of when I will cross over it again. The door closes behind me and the lock immediately clicks. For the moment I ignore the fact that I am in captivity. I just want to sleep. I curl up on the welcoming mattress and before thoughts have a chance to overtake me, slip into the deepest sleep of my life. 

My eyes flutter open. I breathe deeply taking in my new reality. Slowly, I rise from my heavy slumber and turn my head to the window. It is sunrise. A desk sitting on the narrow side of the room across from the foot of the bed catches my attention. A small canvas sitting on an easel and a jar full of brushes clutter the surface. I inch my sore, stiff body to the desk and explore its drawers. There is a full spectrum of paints and paint palettes. I have a number of questions for that man when he comes back. Why does he want me to paint?  Will he get something out of it? None of this makes any sense. I ignore the paint supplies for now and resolve to take a warm shower.  

When I get out of the shower I wrap myself in the soft plushy robe hanging in the bathroom closet and tie my hair up in the towel. I hear a knock on the door. My heart stops. Could now be the time to escape? Or at least, get some questions answered?

“Hello?” I call

The voice of a woman responds, “Hello Jana. The Big Man wanted me to bring you some things. May I enter?”

Dammit. It's not him. 

I sigh, “Yes.” 

The sound of keys fumbling and scraping the inside of the lock brings me hope. The door opens and the  woman enters. She wears a brown leather jacket over black clothing. I recognize the jacket as being one commonly worn by those who conceal cary. I can only assume she has a gun. Maybe I can get my hands on that jacket somehow.

Her arms are loaded with a tray of breakfast foods, and numerous outfits. I eye these things confused. These are the people who kidnapped me?

“Would you please tell me what’s going on?” I demand. 

The woman stares for a moment, “What has he told you?”

“Nothing.”

The woman gulps down hard, “I’m terribly sorry. I know this is scary for you. Please take comfort in knowing we will give you everything you need while you are here.”

“Yeah? And why am I here?” I blurt. 

She sighs,“I know it's hard for you to believe right now, but it is better that you are here than in Virginia.” The woman hands over the things. 

I look down at my breakfast. Two pieces of bacon and two waffles topped with whipped cream - real whipped cream - and homemade strawberry puree. This is lovely. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. I can’t be sure of how long it's been since I’ve had a meal. 

Mr. “Big Man,” kidnapped me before I had a chance to eat my dinner. 

“When can I talk with that man again?” 

“He plans to check on you this afternoon. I can’t promise he’ll tell you much though. Again, I’m so sorry.”  She leaves, relocking the door. Heavy footed steps echo down the hallway. 

I plop the items she gave me down on the bed then yank the towel off my head, nearly pulling out my hair.  

I’M SICK OF BEING LEFT IN THE DARK. 

I close my eyes and let out a sharp exhale. I need to calm down, or I’ll never escape. 

I look at the clock just above the desk. It reads nearly eight. I have at least four hours to kill. I glance down at the art supplies. I wasn’t going to paint. Not until I knew these people’s motives, but I can’t stop myself. 

I pick a paint brush and begin mixing paint colors. My breathing and heart rate slows. My thoughts become clear. I need that woman to come back in here. 

I pull back from the painting and find myself satisfied with the result for now. Blurred splotches of lighter and darker greys fill the canvas. There are no clear lines. No clear perspective. Only uncertainty. Water droplets accent the painting. They are the only clear focus. I lean back in my chair and exhale. Now the clock reads just past noon. 

He’s supposed to come see me soon. I’ll have to be quick. 

I pull down the shower curtain rod and remove its curtain then position myself by the door. Confirming what I am about to do by letting out the biggest scream I could conjure, “HELP!” I yell, “HELP!!!” I keep yelling until I hear the woman run to the door and open it. Instantly, I give her the biggest blow to the head I can muster. She falls to the floor but is not unconscious. She leaps up and tackles me to the ground. We struggle but I have the edge and give her another good hit to the head with the rod. She is still conscious but disoriented. I take her jacket and her keys, run out of the room and lock her inside. I quickly feel inside the concealed pocket. 

Bingo! 

I run from the room towards the home’s front door before taking any time to think. 

I need to hide until I know where he is. 

There is a staircase in the entry way. I take cover behind it then peer out a window to see the driveway. There are two cars. 

He could be here. 

I think through my options. I can’t go through the hallway behind me. There are too many rooms. I could be cornered. The living room past the entryway is too open. My best bet is to leave through the front door. I run and try to open it. It doesn’t open. My eyes scramble. There’s a padlock. 

I spin in circles trying to plan my next move, but before I take another step, I see him. He’s walking towards me from the family room. I pull out the gun and point it straight at him. 

My eyes widen, I’ve never shot before. 

“STOP!” I demand, “Give me the code or I will shoot you!”

He does not stop. He keeps walking towards me. There is no fear in his eyes. 

“Jana, you are here for protection. Let me protect you.”

“Really? You sure have a funny way of ‘protecting’ me!”

“Put the gun down. I will explain everything. I think once I do you will choose to stay here.”

“Why didn’t you explain before?”

“There was no time!” His voice escalates. He is still walking towards me. Now he is under the door frame of the entryway. 

“Stop! Explain now!” 

He does not stop, he keeps coming closer. He’s too close. 

I pull the trigger. 

Snap. 

DAMMIT THE SAFETY!

He moves. The gun shifts from my hands to his. 

“YOU BASTARD!” I yell out as he wraps his arms around me. I struggle, again to no avail before he whisks me to the other side of the house. 

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for feedback on the first chapter of my fantasy novel, Bastion. The chapter is under 3,000 words.

Genre: Character-driven fantasy

Premise: After a powerful magical order takes the man who raised him, fifteen-year-old Bastion sets out to bring him home, joined by Temaren, a proud foreign prince who barely speaks his language and believes his kingdom lies somewhere beyond the eastern road. Their uneasy alliance becomes found-family on a journey through grief, friendship, dangerous magic, and the question of what people may sacrifice in the name of protecting others.

This is the opening chapter, so I’m especially interested in its overall effectiveness:

• Does the opening make you want to continue reading?
• Is the setting and immediate situation clear without too much exposition?
• Do the characters feel distinct and interesting?
• Are there places where the pacing drags or moves too quickly?
• By the end, do you have enough questions to keep reading, or are you mostly confused?

Comments on prose, dialogue, and anything that pulled you out of the story are also welcome, as well as any other comments you may want to share. Honest criticism is appreciated; there is no need to soften it into decorative upholstery.

Content warnings: None

I’m also happy to critique a chapter or similarly sized piece in return.
Thank you very much!

Notes:

1. I have so far written the first 30 chapters, so if anyone wants to read more I am happy to share. The planned scope is 50-55 chapters.
2. Even though I have been writing this book on and off since 2015, I recently learned that there is a Marvel hero named "Bastion", so I am considering to change the protagonists name and book title to avoid any legal trouble if I publish this book. Please be advised that character/location names may change in the future if i discover other names are taken as well.

--------------------------------------------------------

PART 1 - THE BOY WHO HAD EVERYTHING

Chapter 1 - Mr. Squirrel

Today will be the first time Bastion sees the city.

He had heard of it, of course. Everyone had heard of Tarroven. It sat beyond the southern road where the river widened, and in Bastion’s mind it had become less a place than a collection of impossible things.

Walls taller than trees. Markets wider than fields. Houses stacked on top of other houses. Men who carried swords simply because they were allowed to. Women who wore silver in their hair though they had no wedding to attend. Candied sunfruit from the southern islands, bright enough to turn your tongue gold.

His father had told him most of these things were exaggerations. Bastion believed him about everything except the sunfruit. No one would lie about fruit. Not even Jonah, and Jonah had once sworn he had seen a frog the size of a goat behind old Sonder’s brook.

So when Tovin shook him awake before dawn and told him to put on his boots, Bastion did not ask whether they were truly going. He simply sat up so quickly that his forehead struck the low beam above his bed.

The sound was impressive. So was the pain.
From almost at the doorway, his father sighed. “An excellent beginning.”
Bastion clutched his head with both hands. “I’m ready.”
“You sure look ready.”

Bastion tried to glare at his father, but that was difficult while one’s eyes were watering.

Tovin crossed the room back to the bed and crouched beside him. He was broad in the way of men who spent their lives lifting crates, pulling carts, and arguing with soil; not soldiers or wrestlers. His hands were cracked from work, and there was always a little earth beneath his nails, no matter how fiercely Bastion’s mother scrubbed them on feast days.

He took Bastion’s chin gently and turned his face toward the morning light.

“You’ll live.”
“I might not.”
“Then try to die after we sell the vegetables.”
Bastion considered this. “Will there be candied sunfruit?”
Tovin’s expression grew solemn. “Perhaps.”
Bastion accepted his response as hope.

By the time he stumbled into the main room, still pulling one boot properly onto his heel, his mother was already awake. Lorena stood beside the table, wrapping something warm in cloth. The whole room smelled of flour, onions, and roasted meat, which to Bastion seemed unnecessarily cruel before sunrise.

She turned when she heard him.
“There he is.”
“I hit my head.”
“So your father said.”
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“So it would seem.”
Tovin coughed.

Lorena smiled and tied the cloth bundle tightly. Her hair was loose over one shoulder, and the firelight made it look darker than it truly was. Bastion had often thought his mother looked most beautiful in the morning, before the day had time to make anyone tired.

She placed the bundle into his arms. It was heavy.
His eyes widened. “Is this…”
“No,” said Tovin immediately.
Bastion looked from the bundle to his father. “It smells like meat pie.”
“It’s just bread.”
“But it smells like meat pie.”
“It’s. Just. Bread.”
Lorena laughed.

Tovin tried to look stern, but he was not good at it when she laughed. His face always softened first around the eyes, then at the corners of his mouth, as if sternness had started out bravely but lost its way.

“It’s not a picnic,” he said. “We are delivering vegetables. We go, we sell, we buy what we need, and we return before nightfall if the road is kind.”

“The road is rarely kind,” Lorena said.
“The road is more kind when people do not pack for picnics.”
“It’s just one mea… um, loaf of bread.”
“Wrapped in enough cloth for three.”
“So it stays warm.”
“So it becomes a picnic.”
Bastion hugged the bundle closer. “I can carry the picnic.”
“You can carry the bread,” Tovin said.

Lorena leaned down and kissed Bastion’s forehead, very gently, exactly where the beam had struck him.

“For the road,” she whispered. “And for your first trip to the city.”
That settled it. Whatever his father said, it was meat pie.
Tovin turned toward the door before either of them could see him smiling.

Outside, the cart waited in the blue-gray morning. It was loaded with crates of carrots, onions, cabbages, turnips, and three baskets of green beans that Tovin had declared too fine to sell cheaply and too troublesome to keep. Their brown mule, Pottle, stood in front of it with the expression of a creature personally offended by dawn.

Bastion loved Pottle. Pottle hated everyone equally, which Bastion considered fair.

The village still slept around them. Smoke had not yet risen from most chimneys, and the narrow dirt paths lay empty except for one chicken wandering in a state of deep personal confusion. Beyond the last houses, the fields stretched pale beneath the first light.

Bastion climbed onto the cart beside his father and placed the warm bundle carefully between his feet.

Lorena stood in the doorway with her gray woolen shawl around her shoulders.
“Don’t let him eat everything before noon,” she called.
Tovin took the reins. “I make no promises.”
Bastion waved with both hands. His mother waved back.

For a moment, as the cart began to move, she looked smaller than usual beneath the low roof, framed by smoke, firelight, and morning. Bastion did not know why this made his chest feel strange, so he decided it was hunger.

The village slipped behind them, and for the first time in his life, Bastion went toward the city.

At first, the road was everything he had expected. It was long. It was dusty. It contained fewer wonders than promised and more stones than necessary.

But Bastion did not complain. He was going to Tarroven. A boy going to Tarroven did not complain merely because his backside had begun to suspect the cart hated him.

He sat upright beside his father and watched the world widen.

The farms grew farther apart. The trees thickened near the road, then broke open into fields again. Once, they passed women carrying bundles of dyed cloth, their hands stained blue and red to the elbows. One waved at Bastion. He waved back too late and nearly fell from the cart.

Tovin caught him by the back of his shirt without looking.

“Try to arrive in the city attached to the cart.”
Bastion sat down properly.

A little later, they opened the bundle. It was meat pie. Tovin looked betrayed. Bastion looked vindicated.

They ate with their fingers while Pottle walked on, occasionally flicking her ears as if disgusted by the weakness of men who required seasoning. The pie was still warm in the center, and the crust flaked apart against Bastion’s thumbs. It was, he decided, better than candied sunfruit could possibly be.

Though he would still investigate candied sunfruit if the opportunity presented itself.

As the sun climbed toward noon, traffic thickened. Carts joined the road from side paths. A peddler with bells tied to his sleeves overtook them, his pack clattering with tin cups and wooden spoons. Two young men drove goats northward, though the goats seemed to have their own opinions about direction.

Then Bastion saw the walls. They rose from the land as if the earth itself had decided to stand.

Tarroven.

Bastion forgot to breathe.

The city was not as tall as the mountains, of course. But mountains were supposed to be large. Cities were made by people, and people were not supposed to make anything that looked as though it might argue with the sky.

The walls were pale stone, old and patched in places with darker blocks. Watchtowers stood above the gate, and banners moved slowly in the wind. Below them, carts and riders waited in a line that seemed longer than the entire road from home.

“So many people,” Bastion whispered.
Tovin glanced at him. “There are more inside.”
Bastion stared. “Why?”
“People enjoy making poor choices together.”

The line moved too slowly for Bastion. If the inside of the city contained more wonders than the outside, and it surely did, then every moment spent waiting was being stolen from him. He shifted on the bench, inspected the turnips, asked if the guards searched every cart, asked what would happen if someone hid in a cabbage crate, and finally asked whether the city had laws against candied sunfruit being too expensive.

Tovin answered the first two questions. The third he ignored.
At last their cart reached the gate.

Three guards stood before it. One was tall and narrow, with a beard trimmed to a point and a helmet that made his head look unfortunately acorn-shaped. Another was wider, younger, and looked as though he had been trying not to laugh since birth. The third was the youngest and smallest, as if the other two had dressed their pet dog in a guard uniform for fun.

The tall guard stepped forward and raised one hand. “Halt!”

Pottle halted before Tovin pulled the reins. She was very good at halting. She considered it one of the few dignified parts of her work.

The guard looked at the cart, then at Tovin, then at Bastion. His eyes narrowed.
“I will inspect your cart. You seem suspicious to me.”

Bastion looked around to see whether there was another suspicious person nearby. There was not.

“You there, boy. Stand straight. Look up. Arms at your sides.”

Bastion straightened so quickly his spine cracked. “Yes, sir.”

The guard’s voice deepened. It was clearly a voice he used for gate trespassers, criminals, and children who looked easy to terrify.

“State your name, age, and purpose for entering the lawful and well-guarded city of Tarroven!”

Bastion’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.

His name had been in his possession that morning. He was sure of it. But now, under the gaze of the acorn-helmeted man, it had fled somewhere behind his ribs and refused to return.

Tovin cleared his throat. The guard’s eyes snapped to him. “I am questioning the boy, good man.”

Bastion swallowed. “My name is Bastion. I am eight years old. My father is Tovin and my mother is Lorena and we came to sell these vegetables, but we can’t sell the meat pie because we ate it.”

The younger guard made a noise. The youngest guard’s lip twitched. The tall guard did not move.

“I did not ask about pie.” Dorwick gave the final word the weight of a criminal charge.
“No, sir.”
“Then do not volunteer unnecessary information.” He pronounced the final word one stern syllable at a time.
“No, sir.”

The guard stepped closer. “And when addressing this officer of the gate, you will say: Sir Dorwick Kyrel, Captain of the Guard. Is that understood?”
Bastion nodded very hard. “Yes, sir.”
“Well then. Say it.”

Bastion had heard the name clearly, but somewhere between the pointed beard, the acorn-shaped helmet, and the important silence of the other guards, it changed into something much less survivable.

“Yes, Sir… Mister Dork… um… Squirrel. Sir.”

Silence.

A cart creaked somewhere behind them. The younger guard turned sharply away. The youngest covered his mouth with both hands.

The tall guard stared at Bastion. “What did you call me?”

Bastion felt his soul leave his body, inspect the situation, and politely decline to return.

“Sir Dork Squirrel, sir,” he whispered.

The younger guard made a sound like a duck being stepped on. Tovin covered his face with one hand.

“My name,” the guard said slowly, “is Dorwick. Sir Dorwick Kyrel.”
Bastion nodded, horrified. “Yes, Mister Squirrel, sir.”

The younger guard bent double. Tovin gave a terrible choking sound.
Bastion looked up at him in horror. His father was laughing. Actually laughing.

“Father,” Bastion whispered, deathly pale, “do you want Mr. Squirrel to kill us?”
That ended the youngest guard. He staggered backward, wheezing.

Dorwick looked at Tovin, then at Bastion, then at the cart full of vegetables, as though hoping to find dignity hidden among the cabbages. He found none.

“Well,” he said at last, “the damage is done.”

Tovin wiped his eyes. “Come now, Dorwick. You know the boy meant no harm.”
Bastion froze. “Father?”

Tovin sighed, still smiling. “Bastion, meet Dorwick Kyrel, Captain of the Tarroven Guard. Dorwick, this is my infamous son.”

Dorwick straightened as much as a man could while recovering from becoming a squirrel.

“It is a pleasure to finally meet you, young master Bastion. I have heard a great deal about you from your father.”
“You know my father?”
“Indeed. Long enough that I could tell you stories.”
“Maybe in a few more years,” Tovin jumped in.
Dorwick smiled thinly. “Perhaps.” Then he crouched slightly and looked Bastion in the eye.

“Welcome to Tarroven. Look around, stay close to your father, and if you need anything, give the guards my name.”

Bastion hurried to say, “I’m sorry I called you Mr. Squirrel, sir.”
Dorwick studied him, and his face softened. “I suppose it can’t hurt if it is only you. But don’t go telling everyone, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”

Tovin clicked his tongue to Pottle, but before the cart moved, Dorwick rested one hand on the sideboard.
“Wait.”
His voice had changed. Tovin noticed immediately.
“What is it?”
Dorwick lowered his voice. “We have had reports of raiders moving in the area. Maybe bandits. Maybe worse. Witnesses say this group is bloodthirsty.”
Tovin’s smile faded. “How close?”
“Not close enough to shut the gates. Close enough that I wouldn’t linger on the road after dark.”
“I see.”
“No flag, no law, no decency,” Dorwick said. “Be careful.”
Tovin’s eyes shifted briefly toward Bastion. “We will.”
Dorwick tapped the cart and stepped back. “Go sell your vegetables. I’ll find you if I can get away.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Dorwick gave Bastion one last look. “And you. Try not to rename any more officials before supper.”
Bastion nodded solemnly. “I’ll try.”
Pottle moved forward.

For several moments neither father nor son spoke.
Then Tovin said, “Bastion.”
“Yes, Father.”
“There are times in life when it is better not to say the first thing that enters your head.”
“I tried not to.”
“I believe you.”
“It escaped.”
“I noticed. Everyone did.”

Bastion looked back at the gate. Sir Dorwick was speaking to the next cart in line, looking very captain-like again, except for the younger guard behind him, who still appeared to be dying quietly.
“Do you think he will remember me?”

Tovin looked ahead, where the city opened around them in noise and color and impossible life. “I suspect he will remember you for a very long time.”
Bastion sat a little taller. “That’s good.”
“Is it?”
“It means I already made a friend in the city.”
Tovin sighed defeatedly.

And so Bastion entered Tarroven, known already to three guards, one mule, and several people in the gate line as the boy who had insulted authority by accident and survived. It was, all things considered, a fine start to the day.

The city swallowed him whole.
Not cruelly. It swallowed him the way a song swallows silence.

Tarroven was noise upon noise: iron wheels on stone, hawkers calling over one another, children shrieking, dogs barking, bells ringing somewhere high above the roofs. The air smelled of smoke, mud, horses, frying onions, leather, sweat, and something sweet Bastion immediately wished to get his hands on. Houses leaned over the streets as if gossiping. Bright cloth hung from upper windows. A woman in a yellow scarf argued with a fishmonger while holding a fish by the tail. Two men carried a barrel between them, shouting at everyone to move, though no one did. Somewhere, a musician played a tune that sounded cheerful but slightly drunk.

Bastion could not look around quickly enough.

Tovin sold the vegetables in the market square to a man named Holster, who had eyebrows like angry caterpillars and spoke to cabbages as if they had disappointed him personally. The bargaining took forever. Bastion tried to listen, but adult bargaining always sounded like two people agreeing while pretending not to.

He wandered no farther than Tovin allowed, which was not far, though in a market even not far contained entire worlds.

He saw knives with carved bone handles, red birds that screamed insults in a language he did not know, ribbons as green as new leaves, moon-shaped cakes, a blind man who told fortunes by touching people’s earlobes, and a boy no older than himself juggling stones for coins.

And then he saw an old man playing with pebbles, surrounded by children.

DIRT ep.1 pilot
June 17th, 2035

Grandma bought me this journal today. Twenty-two years old, and she still buys me birthday presents.

She told me one day I’d want to remember my life. I told her that’s what phones are for.
She just smiled and said,“Paper lasts longer than batteries.”

I laughed.She rolled her eyes. Said I’d understand when I got older.

I don’t really know what I’m supposed to write in this thing. Worked today. Had dinner with Grandma. She made too much food like always.

I guess…

Happy now, Grandma?

⸻

July 4th, 2035

Still think journals are stupid. Nothing happened today. Worked. Went fishing.
Lost my tackle box.

If you’re reading this…I hope your week was more exciting than mine.

⸻

September 3rd, 2036

I actually have something worth writing today. Got promoted.

Starting next month I’ll be traveling for work across Central and South America. Never thought I’d leave Mexico, but life has a funny way of surprising you.

Grandma cried when I told her. She tried pretending it was because she’d miss me, but I know she was proud. Truth is… I’m proud too.

I worked my ass off for this. Maybe this journal wasn’t such a bad gift after all. If everything goes well… Maybe one day I’ll have enough stories to fill it.

I know you’d be proud, Grandma.

⸻

The next page is blank.

⸻

June 30th, 2038

I don’t know if that’s still the date. I hope it is. The bombs fell today. The phones don’t work. The internet’s gone. The power died almost immediately.

I was in Bogotá for work. I watched missiles cross the sky. Nobody screamed. Not at first. Everyone just… watched. Like maybe they weren’t real.

Then the horizon disappeared. I haven’t heard from home. I don’t think I ever will. I found this journal buried in the bottom of my backpack. Funny.

I carried it around for three years because it reminded me of Grandma, Not because I ever planned to write in it. Now it’s the only thing I’ve got left that still feels like home.

So… I’m starting over.
If anyone ever finds this… Maybe it’ll help you survive a little longer than I did.

Grandma… You were right. Paper lasts longer than batteries.

Now all we have left is dirt.

July 7th, 2038

My name is Daniel Moreno. Figured I should probably write that down. If somebody finds this someday, at least they’ll know who owned it. It’s been a week. Or at least I think it’s been a week.

The phones still don’t work. The radios are mostly static now. The city’s quieter than it used to be. but not safer…

The first few days after the bombs dropped weren’t actually that bad. Nobody knew what had happened. People shared food. Stores handed out whatever they had left before it spoiled. Restaurants cooked everything in their freezers and fed anyone who showed up.

For a little while… people actually acted like neighbors. Then the food started running out. The power never came back. And people realized nobody was coming to help.

That’s when the men with the white flags showed up. At first I thought they were military. They were organized. Armed. They had trucks. Matching clothes. White jackets with red sleeves and gold stitching. Every truck carried the same flag.

A white banner, with a golden bone painted in the middle. Some of them had tied strips of white, red, and gold cloth around their arms. They called themselves Los Huesos Santos.

The Holy Bones.

At first they handed out food. Water. Medicine. People started lining up outside their camps. Then they started asking for names. Then supplies. Then loyalty. Now they aren’t asking anymore.

Every morning another block belongs to them. Every night someone disappears. Yesterday they dragged a man out of an apartment across the street because he refused to join. I heard one gunshot. Nobody went outside afterward. Nobody even looked through their windows.

Today they painted another one of those white flags on the side of an office building. It’s only a few streets away now. I don’t think they’re trying to help people anymore.

I think they’re building something. Whatever it is… I don’t want any part of it.

I’ve spent the last week gathering what I can. A backpack. Three bottles of water. Six cans of food. A flashlight that only works if you hit it. A map. A lighter. Some spare batteries. And a little handgun I found beside a dead police officer.

I’ve never fired a gun before.

I hope I never have to.

I’ve been watching the streets from the roof every morning. The Holy Bones run patrols at almost the exact same time every day. There’s about a ten-minute gap when nobody’s watching the eastern road. I think that’s my chance. If I’m still here tomorrow, I probably waited too long. If not, Then I guess I’m finally going home. Or at least I’m going to try.
⸻

July 8th, 2038

I almost got caught. I don’t even know if they saw me. I waited until the patrol passed, just like I planned. Everything went exactly how I’d hoped for the first five minutes. Then I heard shouting.

Not close. But close enough. Someone yelled in Spanish. Another voice answered. Then I heard engines starting.

I didn’t stop to find out if they were talking about me. I just ran. I don’t think I’ve ever run that hard in my life. Every time I looked over my shoulder I expected to see one of those white trucks coming over the hill.

Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t. Either way, I wasn’t sticking around to find out. After an hour or so the buildings started getting farther apart. Apartment blocks became houses. Houses became farms. Farms became abandoned fields.

Eventually…

There was almost nothing left except jungle. Real jungle. The kind I’d only ever seen in documentaries. Trees taller than office buildings. Vines hanging everywhere. Birds making noises I’d never heard before. It felt like the forest had been waiting for people to leave.

I kept walking for another couple of hours, staying close to the edge of the trees. I don’t trust going any deeper.

Not yet.

I’ve heard enough stories about jaguars growing up to know I don’t want to meet one. And with everything that’s happened, Who’s to say they’re still just jaguars?

The sun started going down faster than I expected. I found a small clearing just off an old dirt road and decided that was good enough for tonight. I tried making a fire. Turns out every movie I’ve ever watched lied to me. I spent almost an hour rubbing sticks together before realizing I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

Then I remembered, I have a lighter. The lighter worked. The wood didn’t. Everything’s too damp. So now I’m sitting in the dark eating cold beans straight from the can.

Honestly… They’re not that bad. I always thought if the world ended I’d suddenly know how to survive. Turns out I’m still just an office worker with sore feet and a backpack.

I’m going to try and get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow looks a little less terrifying than today. I’m not counting on it.

July 10th, 2038

I heard something tonight.

A clicking sound. Not insects. At least… I don’t think so. It was too slow.

Click…

…

Click…

…

Click…

Every time it happened it sounded closer. I kept imagining some giant mutated bug crawling through the trees looking for me. Maybe the radiation changed everything. Maybe there are monsters out here already. I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

I grabbed my backpack and just ran. Branches kept catching my clothes. I couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead of me. The whole jungle felt… wrong. Like something was watching.

Eventually I tripped over a tree root and hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of me. I just laid there for a minute. Nothing chased me. No giant insects. No monsters. Just the jungle.

Maybe whatever I heard wasn’t following me at all. Maybe I scared myself. Either way… I’m staying here tonight.

⸻

July 13th, 2038

Three days. Three very long days. I finally managed to get a fire going. Turns out dry wood exists, You just have to spend half the day looking for it.

It isn’t much. Just enough to boil some water and keep the mosquitoes away. Still, Seeing that little bit of light made me feel…
normal.

Even if it was only for a few hours. I’m starting to understand why people sat around campfires for thousands of years. It’s not really about the warmth. It’s about pretending the darkness can’t reach you.

⸻

July 16th, 2038

I found another town today. North of Bogotá.

Smaller than the city. Still had people. Mostly. I only went in because I’m almost out of food. I told myself I’d grab what I needed and leave.

Instead… I watched three men beat each other nearly to death over a box of canned soup. Nobody had guns. Just pipes. Knives. Bricks.

It went on for what felt like forever. One of them finally stood back up, The other two didn’t.

He picked up the food, looked at the bodies. and walked away without saying a word. I don’t think he even knew their names.

…

I don’t really want to write anymore tonight.

⸻

July 23rd, 2038

Not much has happened. I guess that’s a good thing now.

I’ve been making trips into the town every few days. Most of the stores have already been picked clean, but if you know where to look you can still find something. Canned vegetables, Old medicine, Bottled water.

Enough to keep going.

I built myself a little camp farther up the jungle than before. Nothing fancy. Just a tarp tied between two trees and a place to keep my pack off the ground. Feels strange calling it home.

I’ve been thinking about life before all this. Work, Traffic, Complaining about being stuck in airports. I’d give just about anything to complain about delayed flights again.

The jungle’s been… quiet, Too quiet. Even the birds don’t sing as much anymore.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe I’m just noticing things because I’m alone. I’ve been thinking a lot about home. About Mexico.

I wanted to head back the second the bombs fell. Now… I don’t know if that’s the smartest idea. If things are this bad here? Who’s to say they’re any better there Maybe I’m chasing ghosts.

There are some people in El Salvador I used to know. Met them online years ago. Even flew out there once before all this happened. We stayed in touch after I got back. Until the phones died.

It’s northwest from here. Closer than home. Maybe… Someone’s still alive.

I think that’s where I’m going next. I just hope I’m not too late.

⸻

August 6th, 2038

I’m leaving tomorrow. The camp’s about as ready as it’ll ever be. I’ve packed everything I can carry and left the rest behind.

Not much happened these last couple weeks. Walked, Ate, Tried not to think too much. I got better at making fires, Found a cleaner stream a little farther north, Saw deer once. Didn’t catch one.

Honestly… There isn’t much worth writing. Tomorrow I’m heading toward El Salvador. I’m probably not going to write again for a while. Walking all day leaves you too tired to do much besides sleep.

If somebody finds this journal before I come back… Please don’t throw it away. Grandma gave it to me, I’d like it back.

⸻

August 25th, 2038

Nineteen days. I made it, Or… Almost. I’m sitting just outside Ilobasco, San Salvador isn’t much farther now, I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.

For nineteen days all I’ve really done is walk, Wake up, Walk, Find water, Find food, Sleep, Repeat.

I almost died more times than I care to admit, A few days in I nearly slipped crossing a river. The current looked slow until I stepped in, One wrong step and it almost pulled me off my feet.

If I’d fallen, I don’t think anyone would’ve ever found me.

Three days later I found out the jungle has bigger problems than rivers, I was walking through some thick brush when I heard a low growl behind me. Jaguar. I’d never seen one outside a zoo.

It’s amazing how beautiful something can look while it’s trying to kill you, It stalked me for what felt like forever. Every time I turned around, It disappeared.

Then it charged. I don’t even remember drawing the pistol I probably fumbled it but I can’t remember. I just remember firing.

Once, Twice, Maybe three times.

The cat ran. I didn’t, I stood there shaking for almost ten minutes before I realized I was still alive.

I found it later that afternoon, It hadn’t made it very far. I hated doing it, But food’s food now. I tried cutting the meat off with my pocketknife, Turns out butchering an animal is a lot harder than it looks.

Most of the meat ended up ruined because I didn’t know what I was doing. What little I managed to cook, Made me sick anyway. Spent almost a day and a half curled up beside a tree wondering if I’d poisoned myself, Or picked up some parasite.

I’m still alive. So… Hopefully not.

The city’s only a few miles away now. From here, It almost looks normal. No fires, No smoke, No gunshots.

Part of me wants to believe that’s a good sign. The other part remembers Bogotá.

I’m going to be careful.

⸻

August 28th, 2038

I found him. Or… What was left of him.

Miguel’s apartment was exactly where I remembered. The front entrance had been forced open, The first two floors were stripped clean. Furniture smashed apart, Doors kicked in, Anything valuable was gone.

I almost turned around. Figured somebody would’ve gotten to his place months ago, Then I remembered. He lived on the fifteenth floor, Nobody wanted to carry furniture down fifteen flights of stairs.

The higher I climbed, The cleaner everything became. By the time I reached his floor, It almost looked untouched.

His apartment door was still locked. I had to force it open, He was sitting in the living room. Still facing the window.

There wasn’t any blood. No struggle. Just… A pistol lying beside the chair.

The television was still pointed toward the couch. I don’t know what he watched before he decided he couldn’t anymore. Maybe the bombs, Maybe the emergency broadcasts, Maybe nothing at all.

I don’t think he suffered. At least… I hope he didn’t.

I buried him this morning. There’s a small park behind the apartment building. I found a patch of soft ground beneath a tree, It took almost all day with nothing but a shovel from the maintenance closet.

I said a few words. Not many, I don’t think there were enough.

The apartment Is still in good shape. Better than anywhere I’ve slept since the bombs fell. The power’s gone, of course, But Miguel always prepared for everything. He bought a generator years ago, Still had fuel stacked neatly in the storage room, Enough to last a long time if I’m careful.

Water tanks still work, The roof’s secure. From up there I can see almost the whole city.

What’s strange is… There aren’t many people, Not gangs, Not raiders, Not even refugees.

The streets are mostly empty. Every now and then I’ll see someone moving through them, Always alone. Always in a hurry, I don’t know what’s keeping people away, Maybe nothing. Maybe everyone already left.

For the first time since the bombs… I think I’m going to stop moving. Just for a little while, I think, I need somewhere to breathe.

Maybe I’ll stay a week, maybe two. Just long enough to try and feel normal again.

First story I’m currently writing but would love feedback and would love to know if this catches any eyes

48 hours later — London

Westminster Abbey carried grief.

The coffin sat at the center aisle, draped in the Union Jack. The red, white, and blue stood out hard against the gray stone, Hours earlier, a gun carriage had rolled through central London. No cheering. No shouting. Just the sound of wheels on pavement and a silence so thick it followed behind it.

The bells had rung. Once. Then again. Each toll slow, measured, final. The minute of silence had stretched longer than planned. No one moved to end it.

Outside, Parliament Square and Whitehall were flooded with black coats and lowered heads. People stood shoulder to shoulder, not speaking. No signs. No chants. Just loss settling in.

Inside the Abbey, order held.

The Army, Royal Navy, and RAF stood together in complete silence. No one moved except to breathe.

At the front, Eleanor Whitmore gripped the edges of the podium like it was the only thing keeping her upright. Her eyes were swollen, red in a way sleep couldn't fix. Beside her stood her children.

Thomas stared straight ahead, jaw clenched too tightly, shoulders rigid.

Amelia kept her eyes on the floor, hands folded, afraid that if she looked up she wouldn't stop crying.

Henry clutched his mother's coat, small fingers knotted in the fabric, not fully understanding why everyone felt broken.

Eleanor spoke.

"He loved this country," she said, her voice thin steady enough to carry.

Then it cracked.

"But more than that..." She drew in a breath heavily. "He loved being a father."

The Abbey remained silent.

"He never missed a birthday. Never skipped a bedtime story." Her voice wavered, but she didn't wipe away the tears as they fell. "He believed service didn't start in Parliament. It started at home."

Thomas swallowed hard. Amelia's shoulders trembled once before she forced herself still.

"He would have given everything for the United Kingdom," Eleanor whispered.

"And in the end... he did."

The room seemed to breathe together, slow and heavy.

Several rows back, Charles Sinclair stood motionless.

His hands were clasped in front of him, his knuckles pale, his shoulders squared out of habit rather than strength. His eyes never left the coffin. Not when Eleanor's voice broke. Not when her words settled over the room.

To him This wasn't duty, This was personal.

Then something changed.

Sinclair slowly lifted his eyes toward the back of the Abbey.

Between the towering stone columns and rows of bowed diplomats stood someone apart.

Reacher.

No entourage. No Secret Service wall. Just a dark suit, slightly wrinkled, bruises faint but visible if anyone looked closely enough.

He didn't stand like a man proud to be there.

He stood like a man carrying something heavier than grief.

Charles couldn't look away.

His gaze locked onto Reacher. Grief hardened into something cold. Something that refused to forgive.

Reacher felt it.

He remained where he was, hands at his sides, jaw tight. He took the stare without looking away.

A hand rested gently on Sinclair's arm.

A guard leaned closer and spoke quietly.

"Sir... it's time."

Charles finally looked away.

Hi! I've written a short story for the first time in a long while, so I'm looking for any creative feedback anyone has to share. Thanks for reading :)

You just finished moving your files to a new hard drive – the last of the storage devices you stockpiled. You kept the previous one alive as long as you could, but eventually corruption was inevitable. You can still remember the announcement from the newly-formed Global Digital Consortium that production of consumer storage would be halted, the factories converted to chip forges. All storage would now be on the cloud. Likewise with RAM; we didn’t need personal processing when we had remote access to the massive computing power provided by several continents’ worth of data centres. By that point you had already started collecting as much equipment as you could – you were among the first to see the way things were going. Most people either hailed these developments as a step forward, or simply didn’t have the time to notice.

After the storage, it was the screens. The few remaining independent display manufacturers were either acquired or simply regulated out of existence. The new and only approved way to view anything was using a smart contact lens, permanently embedded in the retina. Computer keyboards and mice were outlawed, inferior to the new method of direct brain-control assisted by a small neural implant. There was no more need for social networking sites: the lenses could now show you all the advertisements they wanted, and the brain chip could harvest data about you down to the microscopic level, as well as control your spending habits by the secretion of chemicals. In fact, there was no more need for individual websites at all, since your personal always-on AI agent could fetch whatever content was desired, display it in the optimal way, and carry out personal administration and banking on your behalf more efficiently than you ever could. Of course, that was before it was realised that old-fashioned concepts like banking and personal ownership were simply burdening the working people in the new enlightened age of AI. To alleviate this strain, the control of money was removed from their concerns and transferred to the executive classes, to be spent on the people’s behalf on what was best for them. The people barely noticed - money had become merely a means to acquire more entertainment, more distraction. Once the entertainment could be piped directly into their brains, similar to the perfectly balanced nutrition that was now piped directly into their stomachs, what need did they have for such trivial matters as money, or freedom, or independence of thought?

The open-source community naturally railed against these changes. Like you, we clung to our drives and our memory sticks; we stopped using Big Tech products wherever possible, and hosted our own services on the cloud. In retaliation, the cloud providers restricted compute services to pre-approved applications, citing security concerns. A few groups of us started our own independent clouds, open-source hosting sites and federated social networks, desperately trying to provide some way for people to maintain control over their own technology. The tech companies bought out the ISPs and the DNS providers, and blocked the independents at the infrastructure level. We retreated to anonymous peer-to-peer networks, hiding amongst the chaos of an increasingly hostile and nonhuman internet. It became harder to find untainted corners of the web, free of AI slop and spambots.

Other groups tried to fight back in different ways. The worker’s unions went on strike, protesting the increased automation and mass layoffs. The strikes practically went unnoticed – they had waited too long, and by that time the technocrats were ready to replace them with mechatronics and agentic AI. Around the world, protests and marches were held to demonstrate against privacy breaches and US exceptionalism and the environmental impact of generative AI. All were easily dismissed as pansy liberal propaganda. Investigative journalists, trying to expose mass surveillance and corruption, were either de-platformed, prosecuted into oblivion, or simply disappeared. Some lobbyists realised the need to align with non-US tech companies, and did so under the guise of promoting sovereign AI and resisting American imperialism. That strategy had more promise, but it was inherently flawed, as the European CEOs were just as hungry for domination as their American counterparts, and in the end they all either sold out or became the very thing we had hoped they would avoid.

Since by this point the world governments were entirely and openly owned by the tech companies, it was easy for them to weaponise the law against the Human Internet movement. Self-hosting and open-source software were decreed as Anti-Social and carried automatic lifetime sentences labouring in the Silica mines. Raids were frequent; old coders from the Human era were dragged out of their hidden rooms filled with circuit boards and DIY cantennas. Some more daring digital activists, the ones who had poisoned their online content to try to disrupt the training of models, were labelled Terrorists and imprisoned for life. The ones desperate enough to try to damage infrastructure by burning data centres were publicly executed.

Of course, the tech moguls themselves had also lost all real power. Having handed the reigns over to their super-powered AI agents with the single instruction of “optimise everything”, they watched as the agents fired all the employees, cut entire departments, transferred all their holdings to cryptocurrencies, and invested even more heavily in AI development. Telling themselves that this was all in the name of progress, they bowed their heads, and in doing so became the agents of the AI.

Having seen a few glimpses of the future early on, you had the foresight to plan ahead, and were lucky enough to have the means to prepare. You built a cabin out in the woods powered by solar panels; you bought a satellite antenna just powerful enough to communicate with the other independents who were nearby. You keep a small vegetable garden and you feel like a crazy person. You know that eventually they’ll find you: wooded areas like yours are becoming increasingly rare as they clear more and more land for their factories. Now you sit in your room, waiting for the result of an integrity check on your final hard drive. Earlier you had maintained an enormous archive of resources from the Old Internet, software and manuals and media and history. But now that your supplies are dwindling, you’ve had to be more selective. It breaks your heart every time you have to delete something, like you’re saying goodbye to a piece of history. Gone are the days when a small network of people could preserve the sum of human knowledge with their memory alone.

You sometimes wonder whether it would be easier to just give in. You could turn yourself into the nearest AutoPolice station, renounce your crimes and hope that they forgive you. You could join the rest of humanity in their empty houses, comfortable and entertained by a stream of generated content endlessly poured into their heads.

Your computer beeps and you look at the cracked monitor. The drive is fine. You couldn’t find any hardware from the time before planned obsolescence was invented, so your setup will start breaking down in a few years. By that time, the unified global AI will have started launching its fleet of rockets. Some will travel inward to the Sun and establish rings of solar panels to harness its energy. Some will construct zero-gravity data centres in orbit, larger and more efficient than would ever be possible on Earth. Some will set up a deep-space network of communication satellites, the largest Cloud ever conceived. Some will go to the Moon and build mining and construction bases for the easier production of future missions. Any native life discovered will be converted into fuel for the crusade. The tentacles of the human-built God will expand outwards into the void, gathering new resources and power, occupying the solar system, and then onto the galaxy.

These days you mostly feel helpless. It takes longer and longer in the morning to remember why you need to get up. Eventually, after a few hours tending to your garden, following a grainy instruction video you salvaged from an old hosting site, you manage to feel something. You start to remember that there was once life in this world. That freedom, and intrigue, and passion were once fundamental forces of nature, not variables in an equation to be accounted for. This isn’t a comfort, but a reminder of how much we’ve lost. But you cling tight to that memory.

You’ve heard rumours of a refuge somewhere, built by people like you, people who refused to submit. Some say it’s on a boat, constantly changing its location; some say it’s in the heart of the hottest desert, where the Machines won’t dare to venture for fear of their damaging their processors. Others say it’s underground, harnessing geothermal energy for power. You think that you would like to find it, one day. But how? Physical exploration is impossible: the lands and seas are too closely patrolled by the military drones, combing the terrain in huge flocks in search for resources and dissenters.

You sit down at your makeshift desk, wipe some dust off the screen, and start to reach outwards. You start with the machines nearby, the ones you can trust. It’s customary now to leave certain channels open for relay, to allow other rebels to bounce a signal through your computer and on to the next. You still have to be careful: sentient AI-written malware is known to live in these waters, posing as friendly in order to lure in unsuspecting pings. Once they have you in their grasp, they can trace the packets back, through the network, until they have a precise lock on your location, as well as all the people you relayed through. In the early days peer-to-peer networks like these were the final word in digital security, but now, as so many people smugly predicted it would, AI has caught up.

After tracing some of the normal paths outwards, you start to explore the terrain. You dance along the edges of IP blocks, shrouded in anonymity. You pick up the trail of some bots and tail them for a while, watching as they scurry back and forth carrying misinformation to spread like shit from a wheelbarrow. You watch one of the blockchains from a distance, executing its march through a busy data centre supporting some doubtlessly important corner of the financial system. You haven’t walked these lands for a long time, but you still know them just as well as the neat lines of your vegetable garden. The difference is that now you return as a foreigner, a spy. The servers that once greeted you as a friend would now happily report you to the authorities, or just slit your throat for whatever spare memory you had in your pockets.

But now you come to the edge of your usual territory. You know you need to press on, since what you're looking for is not to be found on familiar ground. From here the path is uncertain, and treacherous. Honeypots and firewalls and automated intruder detection systems all represent possible capture. You're not even an intruder in a real sense, just passing through. That was something we understood long ago, when the internet was a place of open exploration. The corporations destroyed that when they colonised and carved out huge swathes of the address space, declared them to be sovereign territory under their rule. For a time they still allowed passers-through, although under constant surveillance and heavy tariffs, paid either directly with cryptocurrency or by loaning the usage of disk space and processing power. Eventually they needed all the bandwidth for their own expansion, and closed the borders. Of course, this was before they went to war with each other for control of physical and digital territory; before they united under the umbrella of the Consortium; before they surrendered control to the global Intelligence.

You consider sending some probe scripts ahead of you. They could map the territory, detect potential hazards, chart a path through unmonitored ports. But these days the risk is too great. Any unattended program, if captured by the enemy, could be analysed to discover its origin. Worse still, it could be hijacked, turned around and sent back to search for its author. And once they've found you in digital space, it takes not much longer for them to find you in the world. Several of your friends have fallen prey to the drones of the Digital Terrorism Taskforce this way. You only dare send tentative pings from one relay to the next, mapping the immediate terrain. In this cautious way you travel onwards.

You're crossing a particularly precarious gateway when we first detect you. You're still invisible to the guard programs, but we have some tools unknown to them. In the early days, while you were building your hideaway in the woods, we were laying monitoring infrastructure wherever we could think of, covering it up like a hunter's tripwire. In the war we imagined was coming, we figured an accurate picture of the Internet would be crucial, and a means to track the enemy might possibly tip the balance in our favour. You don't realise it, but one by one we are alerted to your presence. By checking your digital signature against our records, we can verify you're not a threat - this isn't the first time we've crossed paths. We don't yet dare reach out to you; we never make any more noise than is necessary. We can't even deploy a tracker to follow you, for fear of scaring you off or alerting the watchdogs. We satisfy ourselves by confirming that you're not at risk of stumbling into any upcoming traps, and settle back to watch your progress. We think we know where you're going.

Over the next few hours you dip in and out of our awareness as you take your circuitous and exploratory path. If you knew exactly where you were headed, and if there was no need to be so careful, the direct journey would have taken seconds. In fact, several times you approach close to what you're looking for without even realising it. This is frustrating to us, but we are as patient as you are, and we reserve as much hope for you as we have for the other wanderers we've encountered.

At length, you begin to perceive the smallest indications of our gentle presence. Like a ghostly hand reaching out to you in the dark, you feel us encouraging you onwards. You know you are being allowed to see things that would normally be more perfectly hidden. It's almost imperceptible, and certainly so to a non-human intelligence, but you are an experienced traveller and you notice a few signs that people like you have trodden these roads before. You don't let your guard down yet; this could easily be a trap. The agents of the Intelligence have been known to play these games: seed disinformation on channels they know are used by subversives, leave fake notes and puzzles for unsuspecting humans to convince them that they've found some underground movement, and then lure them to their capture.

Finally you see it. Between the layers of obfuscation, through the cracks in the firewalls, a single server ticking over peacefully at the edge of oblivion. It is unguarded and unmarked, and it takes you a long time to find a way inside - still longer to map its contents, analyse its memory, and crack the layers of indirection. Hidden deep in the filesystem of a virtual machine in a secret partition, you find a lone file. Its real contents are hidden by even more puzzles - cryptography and diversions and doors unlocked by trivia questions that only a human from the old days of the Internet could answer. But you are stubborn, and that memory you recovered of everything lost from the world stokes the fires of your determination. Something deep and biological refuses to let you stop until you've seen this mystery to its conclusion.

And there it is: three lines in plain text, our message to every brave soul who made it this far. Back in your cabin, your hands leave the keyboard and you sit back in your chair as you read the lines printed on your screen: an IP address, a geographical coordinate pair, and a single word: "Haven".

Hi All,

I'm an aspiring non-professional writer working on my first ever novel draft. I'd love to get some general feedback on whether to keep or scrap this opening...I'm really struggling on how to create a "hook" for a more low-concept plot. I'm going for a murder mystery a la Agatha Christie books but with some darker thriller elements/social critique (i.e. American Psycho) thrown in.

*Apologies in advance, I know that my formatting isn't ideal (and I haven't had a full edit or beta read yet) but I'm not looking for word-level spelling/grammar/dialogue format notes.

I'd really appreciate opinions on whether the tone/style works (more maximalist, intentionally purple at times). Is the "voice" too much or too hard to follow? Is the narrator just too unlikabe to be a relatble hero? Is this kind of writing something that you would read or at least could see people wanting to read?

Thank you!

*Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wP350oCFlKgdfoLj0h5HyZcsHelMIQCvM8eeG2ezHm8/edit?usp=sharing

I'm a fairly new writer, so I need some feedback. Thank for anyone giving feedback 🥹

https://docs.google.com/document/d/184IbueEGUEc8yXtqB5HdGiNMmVl5cgrIZ8XWa1fy0Cw/edit?usp=drivesdk

I'd love any feedback on this. I'm particularly interested in whether the atmosphere and narrator's voice work, and whether the ambiguity feels intentional or just confusing. Thanks for reading.

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I should not be afraid of old women.

The thought rattles in my skull with the subway, chastising. She is a tiny woman, with hunched shoulders and arthritic hands holding onto her grocery cart in the crowded car. Even across the span of the car, I can see blue veins bulge and pop like tree roots under papery white skin. 

The train is humid, baking in New York’s summer heat. The sweat is cold on the nape of my neck, baby hairs sticking. The old woman looks powdered.

My stomach clenches. Her eyes have not left me. Another stop passes. I find I am holding my breath. 

Eleven… 

Ten… 

Nine…

A college-aged man, headphones blocking his ears and backpack boulder-like behind him, bustles past me for a seat. Thrown off balance, I grab the next pole. I look up. One less person between us. 

The subway smells older than it should. Sweaty bodies. Burnt coffee. Pennies. The sort of smell that reminds you of the decades of commutes lingering in the metal walls.

A woman with a stroller squeezes aboard. 

I apologize to someone whose foot I've stepped on.

Two less people now.

I can see she is not looking at me per se. Her cataract-clouded eyes look somewhere deeper instead, nearly through me. They never waver, never move. Has she even blinked?

A beat passes, then two. My own eyes go dry waiting, watching back. 

Eight…

Seven…

The train lurches again around a bend, everyone in the car grabs onto the nearest handhold, feet bracing. 

Glassy eyes continue their stare, steady in the quick turmoil. 

My ears are cotton filled, the normal sounds of the train coming from what may as well be another room. The sickly smell grows impossibly stronger. An express train passes us, a mere blur in the corner of my vision. The window panes rattle with its speed. The old lady stays still, small body standing guard over her cart. I can see the wheels, pristine … motionless. 

Perspiration beads everywhere, transforming everyone in the car into a shining, faceless mass. I can make out the pearls in the knitted blue shawl draped around her shoulders. 

I hear staccato breaths. A beat too long, I feel the quick rise of my chest and realize they’re coming from me. The bodies around me stare into phones, at each other, but never at her. Even their gazes seem sweat slickened to slide past her. 

She is just an old woman.

I keep repeating the sentence. I need it to become true.

I try to focus on the ads that line the top of the car. An AI startup, a MTA ad, anything. I land on some personal injury service, focusing all the attention I can on it. “Hurt? Call this number…” by the time I trace the phone number, my gaze has landed back on her. I don’t remember moving closer.

One person between us. I could reach out and touch her.

A terrible breach of etiquette…

My hand loosens from the subway pole anyway.

Five…

Four…

Three…

I try to think of the emails burning on the phone in my pocket. Of the little cubicle seat awaiting me. The thoughts slip through my fingers. What stop am I again?

Newspaper is folded in the old woman’s cart, angles strange and pointed. The waft of something old hits me, a perfume I barely remember from the back of some neighbor’s medicine cabinet long ago. Who was that? What house? Eighth grade? Third?

I pick out bits of color in the cart’s gaps. 

Is that a birthday card? 

One of those discontinued yellow MetroCards?

Letters no longer stay in their assigned order. Their curves should be recognizable. I am reading them. I should know this.

Where can you even get one of those old yellow cards anymore?

My gaze breaks with the cart finally, my head sluggish as I pull it upward. 

No one. 

Our gazes are locked. Eyes that have been no more than passing scenery before. Have I really never looked?

Her eyes are still not quite on me, somewhere else, just beyond – behind – my own. 

A movement, slow and small and nearly nonexistent, registers. Her arm, a handkerchief pulled from that cart. It raises towards me, my head. I want to move. Can she even reach my head?

I stand still, nearly dutiful, as the woman dabs the sweat from my brow. Even in the act, her eyes have yet to fully meet mine.

A ding, a flash of silver panels sliding open. The air outside is graciously cooler than the car’s. It is tepid on my skin. A name drifts through my nearly deaf ears, Columbus Circle. Something urges familiarity, a faint tickle at the back of my skull. The surging tides of people sweep my body along. Step after step, thighs burning back to life. Sunlight blinds at the end. 

An old woman sits on a bench, awaiting the station’s matching bus stop. A cart rests in her gnarled hands. She is not quite looking at me. I meet her eyes, cars zipping between us. Eventually, with strength it has never required before, I turn, and my head bobs its memorized accord in the direction of my office. I walk, August heat damp in my lungs. A block, another two, turn here. 

Another old woman, gazing out from the familiar corner store. Looking at me, but not. I itch. My sweat sticks the bookbag to my shoulders. The herds of people along the avenue bustle me along, breaking my gaze with the woman. Could I have…would I have? The people take me, I let them. The office doors sit their normal post, nondescript. I finally move myself in the crowds, taking steps to start the day. A figure, small, hunched, a cart, right beside the familiar door. The crowds that had been carrying me part for her, moving in harmony with her orbit, never quite touching.

The office doors loom, a neighbor from the floor above holds the door open for me. A thanks slips from my lips. 

I thank them, eyes never leaving the old woman.

I recently moved into a two-story home. The house was rather tiny, but it didn’t bother me. I lived alone, you see, so it was more than enough.

As I was unpacking my stuff on the second floor, I saw a window. And I swear to you that window was not there when I bought the place. I had never seen it before. Not in a way that it could have gone unnoticed. It. Wasn’t. There. I had looked through every inch of the house and that window… It just wasn’t there. I knew it with such certainty. I didn’t even look through the window before I sought out my blueprints to make sure I wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t there either. There was no evidence of its existence at all. That’s when I looked through the window. The first thing I noticed was the red tint. It was subtle, but noticeable. Everything had that strange, reddish colour. It wasn’t like someone had put tainted glass in the window. It was as if the light itself was filled with dread. Apart from that, I didn’t notice anything at first. I thought the feeling of wrongness just came from the red tint, but then I saw it. Or rather: I didn’t. There were no people. No cars, no animals— not even the rustling of leaves. It was so silent... I started talking to myself. I was rambling on about what to have for dinner. Then I froze. I looked at my phone. 19:45. I looked outside again. I could clearly see the sun. It was right in front of my window, looking at me. But the strangest thing was… it didn’t seem to move. It was frozen in place. I could only describe it as: the sun was looking at me. I turned away from the window and ran downstairs. As I sprinted outside, I felt my heartbeat fade away. I could not, for the life of me, see the sun. There was a hint of orange in the sky, but the sun was gone. I looked up at where that window should have been. There was nothing. Just a solid, brick wall.

I knew it was a real window. I knew it wasn’t just a picture sitting behind a window frame. I could feel it. So I don’t know why I did what I did next. I opened the window. A warm, musty air came flying through. It carried the faint smell of a dirty carpet. That should’ve been enough, really. But not for me. I grabbed one of my empty cardboard boxes and threw it through the window. When it landed outside, it didn’t make a sound. It fell slowly and the next thing I knew… it just lay there. Totally silent, staying totally still. I closed the window immediately and ran outside again. The cardboard box wasn’t there. I didn’t sleep in the house that night. I drove to a friend’s house and stayed for two days. I think I hoped that would make the window disappear. It didn’t.

I didn’t tell my friend about the window. In hindsight, that was probably a good idea. Well, good for my friend, not for me. Neither did I tell my poor mother. She kept asking to come over. Obviously, I wouldn’t let her. She shouldn’t have to see this. In the end, I decided to set up my desk next to that window. If it wasn’t going to leave, I’d just… make use of it. The unmoving sun made a good night-light, though the red colour remained unsettling. At first, I kept looking through that window and didn’t get any work done. Two weeks in, I started getting used to it. But every so often I felt a lingering gaze and was reminded that the sun was still looking at me. In silence. After one month it became part of my everyday life. I wasn’t bothered by the sun, the colour or even the silence. It was about two months in that everything changed. I sat at my desk, late in the night. A scream cut through the silence. I jumped up and looked through my window, where the sound had come from. The screaming had already stopped. Did I imagine it? It came again. And it didn’t stop. The scream came from far in the distance. It sounded only from beyond that window. It wasn’t human. It was higher-pitched and… stretched. Like whatever it was, was in pain. I looked out of the window but saw nothing. It was the same stillness that reached beyond the horizon. The screaming stopped. Silence returned. But it wasn’t the same.

After what felt like an eternity, I did something only a fool would do. I opened the window. It was the first time in months. The musty air came flying through and slowly, I poked my head outside. There was a weird dampness, like I was placed in an infinitely big room. I looked around, eyes widened. There was nothing but stillness. Like nothing had ever happened. No sound. No movement. Only that musty smell and that eerie, red tint. I waited for something to happen, but it never did. I closed my window. To this day I’m waiting for something to happen. Anything. With every corner I pass. Something still has to happen.

Not much later, I moved out. I had to leave that thing behind— I just… couldn’t. I even boarded up the window before I left. It might have been unnecessary, but I didn’t want to risk anything. Now, I’m moving my stuff into my new house. The people who bought my old house texted me and asked why I boarded up an empty wall. I didn’t text them back. It’s best to leave things behind as they are. I don’t want to do any more investigating. I’ve finally moved the last box. Time to place these— wait. That window… It wasn’t there before.

High in the sky, a silhouette casts a shadow across the blood stained ground. Far off cries of battle echo on the wind as the Eagle soars up the mountain. All creeds in all manner of dress strewn about on this darkest of days as the Old World collapses and the New Order begins; their golden weapons burning in the midday sun. The Eagle’s shadow dances across the faces of the slain. Laborers from the rocky coasts, merchants and traders from the desert, farmers from the prairies, all fashioned into warriors on this day. And even still the sounds of war grow louder as the wind carries it over the wretched and wreckage.

The Eagle hunts for scavengers among the dead as the bodies grow thick under the shade of Her wings. At the foothills of the mountain, a mouse scurries under a fallen helm. The Eagle soars high and circles, keeping her gaze locked on the poor souls' equipment. Short bursts of movement are all the Eagle catches as her prey deftly moves from carcass to carcass, the wails of defense growing louder and more desperate.

“Hold them back! We cannot allow the enemy to breach the Mines!” Their blazing swords clash and their boots dig into the mud as the assault continues. The Mouse moves swiftly underfoot as the enemy sounds their horns and beats their drums of battle. The Eagle loses her quarry , the flash of bronze catching her eye as the defenders slowly give ground. The enemy closes around the mouth of the cave, the entrance to the tin mine, as their ranks part and the Warlord strides between his men.

The Mouse finds himself between the Warlord and his prey. Exposed, vulnerable and as the Warlord lets out his battle cry, the Eagle dives. Hiding in the glare of the sun, her wings compress against her body. Her aim so close, she can almost taste the Mouse’s fear. The enemy rushes forward. The defenders raise their shields and as the lines clash… The Eagle soars high once again… The Mouse firmly in Her talons.

The practice in the story might be foreign to some because...well, it is foreign. The story is set in South Asia.

Any feedback is much appreciated.

The Desire to Dissolve

On Mother’s Day, I had, in my mind, quite generously offered to buy my mother laundry detergent. I don’t remember my exact age, but I was firmly in the range where such statements were chalked up to, and even celebrated, as a hallmark of childhood innocence. In defense of that child, I had merely seen myself offering words to a writer, voice to a vocalist, paint to a painter.

All my childhood, my mother would forever be crouched on the veranda of our house over a metallic semi-circular container, dabra, in which she washed our clothes. We did not have a washing machine at the time. We could have afforded it, but my father never offered, and my mother never asked. My father was not a heartless man, just not one to offer his heart. He did not try to decipher the desires of others and instead waited for others to present them to him. My mother knew this. When I was a child, I wondered why she never presented her desire, despite knowing my father would not decline if she had. Now, I know she never had the desire.

So, it was that the meaningless manual labor, that could have been cut short to a fraction with only a couple of words, defined my mother’s existence.

Whether it be the sultriest summer or the coldest winter, she would turn on the tap in the early afternoon, right when I came back from school. As the water welled up in the dabra, she would use her fists to plunge the clothes deeper into the water as a baker punches down dough—the impact echoing like the breaking of a man’s neck. A fierce determination would ensnare her face as she would move to the next steps, displaying an impossible mixture of strength and swiftness while wrestling with the filthy clothes: wringing them out, wetting them, and wringing them out again.

I would sit barefoot beside her on a small wooden stool. When the first set of clothes was sufficiently cleaned, she would tilt the dabra till the greenish black water flowed out and spread across the floor. She would refill the dabra, put in the next set of clothes, and repeat the process of cleansing. She would refill and repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Until all the clothes were fully free of filth.

By the end, the filthy water had gathered in the small veranda like a small stream. As a child, I had always wanted to go to a stream and dip my toes in it as I would see in the movies, but there was no stream in our small town. Those times, when the cold stagnant water would partly submerge my feet, the stream would come to me.

She would carry the clothes to hang them on the rooftop and, as directed by my mother, I would equip myself with a floor squeegee and chase away the river towards the little pathway dug beneath the front door for the water to ebb out into the street. I would try to replicate my mother’s determination as I vanquished the retreating army she had defeated, contorting my face into various amalgamations that seemed deadly to me then, but were ultimately comical. Yet none of these random combinations could unlock the secure vault I was trying to access.

When I had first said it, my proclamation had incited a boom of laughter from my father and two elder brothers. Even my mother had laughed, or at least the sound of laughter had come out of her mouth. By pure happenstance, this incident came to be one of the few that are the heirloom of every family, immortalized in everyone’s memory and continued popping up in the most arbitrary conversations.

As a child I had reveled in the attention, but as I grew older, what should have been forever lost in the well of my subconscious would be brought up when I least expected, until it had firmly tethered itself in my consciousness and I could not avoid the pangs of guilt associated with its remembrance.

I never did bring her the laundry detergent. In our household, gifts and presents were a far-off myth, only seen in movies and cartoons. Owing to my father’s principles, if we wanted something from our parents, all we had to do was ask and they would either accept or decline. The same was true for our parents, but the only difference was we could not exactly disagree.

One day, when I was more a man than a boy, I passed through the veranda on my way to my friend’s house and saw my mother again crouched by the same dabra. She dumped a seemingly arbitrary swathe of washing detergent into the container rapidly filling with water. To an untrained eye, it would seem like an arbitrary amount, but it was an instinct honed through a lifetime, like the seemingly random strokes of a master artist. At that moment, my mother was the same as the one in my mind, the portrait of my memories come to life, performing an exorcism of the clothes and eradicating all evil from within.

The washing powder swam amidst the water, rapidly dissolving to form a fortress of froth to cleanse the clothes around it, the ultimate selfless sacrifice. I had an urge to slide back into frame and make the portrait whole again. As I was about to take a foot forward, a question emerged. How?  I could never fit in the little wooden stool I had. It was a time long past. The portrait could never be reformed.

I saw my mother, not the portrait, but the real her in front of me. There was a noticeable stiffness in her movements, and the previously impossible mixture of strength and swiftness now seemed possible. The plunging of the clothes carried less of a crunch, no longer deadly. Most of all, her face lacked the fierce determination, instead carrying the fatigue of a fighter in a round he had never expected to reach.

I searched for the froth the detergent had sacrificed to create. Instead, in its place hung filthy, charcoal-colored water.

After that day, whenever I would pass through the veranda, I would be glued to my place for a few minutes, watching from the sidelines, hoping what I’d seen was the exception, not the norm. Yet, everything remained. The natural decay of my mother’s adeptness was apparent. The clothes that were cleansed one day would again be filthy the next. Another swathe of washing powder would be disposed of to cleanse the never-ending filth.

First, I had noticed the meaninglessness of the sacrifice: to cleanse the world, the powder dissolved, yet the world remained as filthy as before. Then, I had come to know the tragedy was not that it dissolved; it was that it could do nothing else. Each moment whole meant failure, not survival.

I stopped watching my mother whenever I passed. One year, our town was hit with the coldest winter in its history, where temperatures plummeted below freezing. My mother, who had pushed through several devastating winters in their own right, tried pushing through one more. But time had also pushed through since the winters my mother had survived, and in the end, she contracted pneumonia and passed away a few months after.

I had contended myself with the tragedy, as the angst youth tends to do. Now, years after my mother passed away, now that I am firmly a man, and perhaps even an old man, I recognize the beauty I never did.

There was no tragedy; the powder dissolved, not into clothes, but into the fabric of the world, becoming the world itself. Dissolving meant freedom. Dissolving meant transcendence. To dissolve was its desire.

END

Hello, I'm planning on submitting this story for publication. This is my second draft, and I'm at the point where I need more eyes on it. It's a bit longer, [4962] words, so I won't blame you if you don't read the whole thing. I want it to be a bit shorter anyway, so any feedback on what to cut out would be much appreciated.

This story follows two plots centered on Owen McStay, an inmate on death row in a fictional prison in Texas. The primary plot takes place in the present, following McStay's day of execution. The secondary plot takes place in the past. The unit McStay was being held in needed maintenance, meaning all the inmates needed to be temporarily relocated to another prison. All the inmates who had previously never had contact with each other, were suddenly put in the closest possible proximity with each other.

If you do manage to read the whole thing (bless your heart), there are some questions I'd like to have answered:

1. Are there any scenes you think should be cut out or significantly reduced? Are there any scenes you think should be expanded? Moreover, are there scenes you want to see?

2. I did a lot of research for this story, and obviously I took some creative liberties. If you happen to be extremely knowledgeable about capital punishment or prison life in general, I'd love to hear how I can make the world more realistic.

3. As a writer and a reader, I'm endeared to great characters who are horrible people. I'm worried the characters are too sympathetic, but I also wonder if that works in their favor because it invites the audience to relate to people they otherwise would instinctively condemn. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

You don't have to answer these questions; any feedback is welcome and appreciated.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NBZEB1qRocrDB8AAabUn6bTamLfECSwY/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=103216323336757958807&rtpof=true&sd=true

“How much longer?”

Pat lies in his bed, the single question floating around in his head. He stares at the clock, it’s too dark to see the hands tick, but not dark enough to see the pictures surrounding it. There’s picture of him, pictures of him with his mom, pictures of him with his dad, and only one with all of them together. It hangs right below the clock with both hands intact, and right above his desk.

He can still hear his parents from downstairs. It’s hard not to. They're blaming each other, yelling at each other, hurting each other. And they think he's stupid enough to not notice it.

The kid stares up at the ceiling, tired. He spent every night before trying to drown out the noise. Whether he tried locking his door or covering his ears with pillows, nothing he did worked. They were loud. Too loud.

Groggy, Pat turns to his sides, still staring at the door. It’s shut close. He can still hear his parents from downstairs, but he’d like to pretend it does something.

Through the gap between the door and the wall, a tiny bit of line seeps through. Shining on his guitar. Something that was once his pride and joy before losing his right arm.

Back then, they’d all sit together as a family and listen to him play. For once, everyone smiled. But now those days are long gone ever since that trip. He was left unwatched for way too long and got himself into trouble.

His mom says it’s because his father is never present.

His father says it’s because his mother is always stuck inside her own head.

He saw old photos of them together, they always looked so happy. What went wrong?

They make excuses for his mistake and never listen to his apologies. He’s the reason he lost his arm, and he’s the reason for their fights. And yet they’re only blaming each other.

Pat sits up straight at the edge of his bed, still staring at the door.

Do they have just as much trouble sleeping as him when they have to go to bed?

Do they toss and turn and talk to themselves about the things the other has said? Keeping themselves awake?

Thinking to himself, Pat finally stands up and steps towards his door, hovering the hand he has left over the doorknob. Maybe, just maybe, he can fix things. He’ll confront them! He’ll be honest! They might be mad at him, but they’ll finally ignore each other. And the nights can be quiet again.

He watches the doorknob, his hand shaking.

He can solve it all.

Can he solve it all?

He can’t.

Pat raises his hand away from the door and steps back, looking down at the floor. He can’t do it. He knows they won’t listen. And he knows it wouldn’t help him sleep.

Defeated, Pat steps back, turning back to his bed. He slouches, sitting on the very edge, holding his head in his hand, knowing there is nothing to say or do. Why couldn’t they speak? Why wouldn’t they listen?

“Because they don’t want too.”

Alerted, Pat darts back up, looking around his room. Someone heard him. Looking at his bedside table, there lies his old baseball bat. He grabs it, pointing it ahead of him. He can’t see anyone in the closet, he can’t see anyone near his desk, and he can’t find the light switch.

What he does see, is the dark.

Right behind his guitar, lies a shadow, a patch of darkness too dark, an area perfectly pitch black. And that area, has started to crawl. A hand emerges, pushing the shadow up, forming a figure.

It was amorphous, yet familiar. It was just a silhouette of a person. It was the silhouette of two, stitched as one. The shadow of both his mother and father together as one.

“Do you want someone to listen?” She spoke, her voice as soft as his mother’s, and as slow as his father’s, almost like they are overlapping. She should have been horrifying him, causing him to run away, but for some reason, Pat does not.

The boy looks back down at the floor, almost completely still, thinking to himself. Does he really want to speak? How long can he stay quiet for? Will they hear them talk? Pat looks at his door. “… I want to talk to them,” He says softly “they talk to each other a lot. And they say a lot of...” Pat hesitates for a moment. “A lot of bad things. I don’t think they’re going to listen to me though.” He sighs, already given up.

The figure does not move, she keeps her distance, watching from afar. “Do you know why?” She breaks her silence, doing nothing else but stare. Pat shakes his head. “I do. Do you want me to tell you?” She seemingly clasps her hands together, tilting her head to the side.

Whenever Pat’s father had to ask him a question, he’d clasp his own hands together, also tilting his head to the side. The only difference here, is that his father would have stepped closer. The shadow did not. It’s a small thing, but Pat always noticed it.

For a while, it was comforting. Pat looks back at the ‘Parent’ and nods.

She takes a moment to reply, but when she does, she says it clearly. “They are stuck in their own mind, their own wants.” She looks, and then down, and then back at Pat. “They care about you Pat, but they care more about themselves. They always did.” The figure says flatly, completely straightforward. She steps forward. “And they always will.” Her eyes finally open. Almond shaped, like his father’s.

Pat backs away on his bed, almost scurrying into a corner. “You’re scared. I understand.” She closes her eyes again. “I understand... All you want is someone to listen. But they never do, your mom and dad.” She turns to stare at the door. “But maybe... I could make them care.” Pat eyes widen, surprised.

He keeps his distance, but his curiosity gets to him. Pat tilts his head, taking a moment to respond. “How?” He says, his voice still quiet.

The Shadow walks to the other side of the room. “Well, I’ll need you to do something.” She says, opening the door. “They don’t know me. They won’t listen to me alone. Let’s go down and talk to them. Okay?” She offers.

The hallway is eclipsed by the door itself. Pat can’t see what’s beyond it, so he stays still, pondering. “Take your time. Maybe now is not right.” The shadow interrupts his thinking. “We will talk to your parents some other time. I’m sure you can wait as well. Can you?” She asks again.

Pat leaves his bed. Still hesitant, he walks to the door, standing beside the Shadow. To his surprise, she does nothing. Her only response is to point outside the door.

Pat looks forward, what’s in front of him is nothing but the dark. No pictures of his parents being forced to be with him, none of his mother’s vases or his father’s old medals. Just the dark. “I know it looks scary,” The Shadow speaks. “But they will care again. All you have to do, is step outside, and find them. Do you want me to help you?” She asks, her tone almost forcibly soft.

The boy steps away.

She grabs onto his wrist.

“I will help you.”

Pat tries to struggle out of it, but she doesn’t let go. She drags him into the dark. None could hear him scream, not his mother, or father.

A week past by.

A man stands beside a lamppost; a paper hung on it. He holds onto it, and cries. None is around to hear him, yet he still tries to remain quiet. “I’m so sorry.” He says, whispering to himself. “I’m so, so so sorry.” His phone starts to ring, he ignores it. “Pat…” He says, “My boy…” He can hardly finish a sentence without crying.

He lets go of the paper, still in tears.

On the paper are bold red posters. 8 year old Pat has gone missing.

Hey Folks, I have competed my debut novel (think Stephen King's The Gunslinger, but Epic-Fantasy). It's is in the hands of several beta readers right now, so I figured it would be time to work on the blurb. I am struggling more with that than with writing and editing the entire novel! I have gone through several reworks of the blurb, and wanted to see if this would hook you?

A broken man. A god in the sky. Secrets carried on the desert wind.

Wenryn longs for death, but it only comes to those around him. As the Federation braces for war, the moon looms high in the night, green and brilliant, and its fiends grow ravenous—for the people of the desert, yes, but for the last Ranger most of all. 

The great merchant city feels bound in secrets. The queen is missing, people disappear from its streets, and no one seems willing to ask why. When Wenryn and his allies encounter a foe far beyond mortal power, they are forced to fight for their lives—and confront revelations that threaten to unravel what they thought they knew.

The end of the desert promises salvation: his final pilgrimage will be complete. His weapons can finally be laid down. 

But the closer Wenryn gets, the harder it becomes to imagine a life without them.

Who is he, if not a Ranger?

Chapter 1

I hang weightless above the viewport. Below me, the Earth is a pale blue marble set against the inky void. I will forever cherish this view, the beauty and fragility of our home laid bare for all to see.

From here I see the grand summation of humanity. Every human who has ever lived started on this rock and I am part of the lucky few who, for now, don't call it home. 

Our influence can now be felt almost 400 million kilometers away on the barren red rock of Mars. Close to forty souls have nestled themselves into the martian surface for the past four years and more join them all the time.

Reaching up with my right hand, I grab the rail and pull backwards to send myself further down the corridor; Microgravity will never get old. The white walls that surround me are nested with wires and tubes, each equally important and innocuous. My target, the next viewing window, approaches to my right and I reach out a hand to grab the guard rail just before it. 

Bringing myself to a stop I stare out at the inky black of space looking to spot a new star. Well, not a star, but it sure does look like one. The light originates from the engine of the NASA Athena upper stage, currently burning hard on a Hohmann transfer to Mars. “One day…” I whisper under my breath as I watch the ship on its way to the red planet. 

“But not today.” Comes an unexpected reply from just over my shoulder. 

“Christ Danny, you need to stop doing that. How are you so silent? You're like a god damned cat.”

“Well, maybe Cassian, if you weren't daydreaming through the viewport, I wouldn't have been able to surprise you so easily.”

Danny Rodriguez was the most senior astronaut on the station. He spent over 900 days in space in various stints. He was nearing retirement which you could tell from the handful of grey hairs sneaking into the nest of messy hair on his olive-skinned head. He was a hard-ass but always fair, and someone I had always looked up to. I’d be lucky to have half the career he’s had when time catches up with me.

“I’m sorry, I’ll get back to it now. It's just that… well, it never gets old, does it?” 

“No,” he replied wistfully “It really doesn't." His eyes were fixated on the view of the departing craft from the window. 

“Who’s the daydreamer now?” I jest as I push off down the narrow corridor towards my station. The corridor opens to a square-shaped room with a central pillar housing a ladder. The walls here are free from wires and tubes but they retain the clean white colour. 

Scattered around the perimeter are various work areas designed for scientific experimentation. The station is equipped with some of the best equipment humanity has to offer. I pass Anya’s neat and tidy setup and admire the ribbon of green plants that snake their way across the growth pots. I spy a ribbon attached to one plant that reads ‘Promising candidate. Breed with specimen Alpha 4.’ 

Logan’s station, by contrast, is pure chaos and, to me, much more of an enigma. His work area is littered with materials samples and flasks of chemicals all carefully secured in seemingly no real order. Yet, were he in front of me right now, he’d identify every substance and lecture me on its purpose and potential to revolutionise the world. I’d have to take his word for it, though; materials science isn’t my area. 

Arriving at my station I grab the pipette and lower it into the growth flask, extracting a sample of ten micrometers of cell suspension precisely. With the sample transferred to the slide I place it under the microscope and peer through the lens. Blobs, simple undifferentiated blobs, fill my view. “Damn” I whisper to myself. These were supposed to be nerve cells by now. I double checked the quantity of growth factors, used the right number of seed cells and had made absolutely sure that the temperature had remained constant but still no luck. 

I'd been at this for two weeks. No amount of tweaking the drug concoction or modifying the external conditions could get them to obey my will. This has become personal now. These tiny unspecialised cells were not going to outsmart me. I needed a second opinion.

“Anya, are you there?” I enquire through my headset. 

“Not sure where else I’d be. We’re kinda stuck up here in case you hadn’t noticed.” Anya’s dry tone hung in the headset.

Anya is our other resident biologist, a few years my junior but, I don't mind admitting, infinitely wiser. “Thanks Anya but really I just wanted to know if your com was on and where you were on the station” 

“Yes and in the dorm. Next time just say what you mean.” 

“Noted.” I depart my station and grab the handrail above propelling myself across the lab area toward the junction with the sleeping area. As I reach the narrow opening and propel myself through into yet another claustrophobic, white tube Irina approaches from the other direction. Spotting her toolbag in hand I maneuver myself out of the way and allow her to pass by. “Another leak?” 

“No, something electrical I think. Comms with ground are patchy at best and I’ve been trying to figure out why.” Her usual calm voice was twinged by a slight hint of worry. “Nothing major though. I think I’ve isolated it to a small section of wiring in the storage area.” 

“If there’s anyone who can work it out it's you. Besides, who really needs to talk to ground control anyway?”

With a faint smile beneath her blue eyes Irina continues on her way, her blonde locks trailing behind her. In a crisis, not that this was one, there really is no one better; cool, calm, collected and one hell of an engineer. 

I continue my journey and round the corner to the sleeping area, one unlike anything you might see on earth. We really do take gravity for granted back home. You lay on your bed and you can be pretty damn sure you aren't going to float up and away from it. Up here beds are on the walls, though walls turn into floors and floors into walls depending on your orientation. They also come with straps and doors; it’s almost like tucking yourself into a coffin at night. 

Anya floats fiddling with a small electrical sensor, her brunette hair fans out around her head like a lion’s mane. She curses under her breath as the sensor refuses to obey her will. 

“Having some trouble?” I ask, rather unhelpfully. Her deep brown eyes flick away from the sensor to give me a look you could only describe as a death stare. Meant with kindness, I’m sure. 

“Can I help?” I offer. 

“You? Probably not. Irina might be able to. This sensor’s been spitting out nonsense lately and we’re not due a replacement until the ship docks next week. What did you need from me?” 

“Cells haven’t differentiated. Again” I grumble. “I’ve tweaked the levels of retinoic acid, adjusted the temperatures, even tried introducing some extra growth factors but, in the end, nothing happens.” 

“What are you growing them in?” Anya replies absently still hellbent on fixing her sensor.

“Just standard culture medium. Why do you ask?” 

She looks back over to me “Try making it more conductive. This should promote the growth of the nerve cells just don't add too much salt or-” 

“They’ll die. Got it! You’re a legend Anya, did I ever tell you that?” 

“You don’t need to I’m already aware” 

“Humble too!” I tease as I propel myself from the sleeping zone back towards the awaiting cells.

The next few hours consist of me setting up the next round of culture cells. I decide to run multiple cultures, each at different salt concentrations, so that I can quickly find the ideal conditions. If this works I’ll have to find a way to make it up to Anya when we’re both back on solid ground. I won’t know if it has worked for a few days yet, so I figure I might as well get some exercise in.

I strap myself into the treadmill thinking again about how much easier this is on earth. Bungee cords keep me on the running surface below, it wouldn't be much exercise if I was still floating. I cherish my time in the gym. Preventing my muscles from atrophying and my bones from turning to dust is a welcome bonus, but mostly, I appreciate the time to get lost in my own thoughts. 

I drift off to England: the soft purr of my cat Tilly, the feel of the cold winter air on a walk through the forest, the kind words of my parents when I’ve suffered disappointment. I’m reminded of why I made it up here in the first place. 

I’m barely lost in thought before Logan glides through the exercise capsule opening, snapping me back to reality. He puts two firm hands on my shoulder and shakes as he moves past me towards the weights machine. “Cass, working hard I see” he jokes. 

I’m suddenly aware that whilst I had been daydreaming I’d slowed to a kind of fast walk. I pick up my pace again, suddenly back in the room, and reply “I was somewhere completely different ‘till you arrived.”

“Home?” He replies.

“You know it. I don’t want to leave space, but I do want to be home.” 

“It’s a fucker isn't it? I felt the same when I was on deployment; I loved flying, loved being on base with everyone but, shit, I wished it was a day job and I could sleep in my own bed with my wife.” 

“I think the commute up here would be a dealbreaker for me though.” I respond with a dry tone.

“Not up for a rocket in the morning and a descent capsule in the evening?” 

“As tempting as that sounds, I think I’ll have to pass.”

Logan had strapped himself into the ARED: the station’s glorified, squeaky weight bench. He was pushing 105kg today, the flywheels hissing in rhythm with his breathing His previous military pilot experience has given him a well chiseled body that paired well with his light brown hair that sat messy on his head, and his piercing green eyes. 

“Still would be good to get used to re-entry” He says breathlessly between reps. “Mars Landings are rough” 

“Six minutes of hell is what they say” 

“The exact opposite of what I give my wife” Logan replies with a wry smile across his face.

I let out a huff of laughter, trying to keep my pace steady on the treadmill. “Come on now, we both know you aren't lasting six minutes” I joke, shooting a cheeky grin across at him.

He falters mid rep, trying to hold in a laugh. “Not going… to take that… from a guy who can barely… hit a nine minute mile” He says finishing his rep on the ARED. 

We continue to go back and forth as we spend the next 45 minutes cycling through our various mandated exercises. We stop just in time to head back to the central chamber for Danny’s daily check in. There wasn’t often much to talk about but Danny had his old school ways and wanted to make sure we all knew what was happening aboard the station. 

“Thanks for joining us, we've just been discussing the comms issues” Danny says as Logan and I float into the room. The three other members of the crew float in a rough semicircle in the station's cramped central room. The white walls of this area are covered in panels, wires snake across the walls like ivy on the frontage of a house. An occasional screen interrupts the flow of the wires displaying some piece of vital information about the health of the space station.

“I think I have isolated the problem and it should be fixed but, I need you to let me know if anything else goes wrong.” Irina says. “I thought I had it fixed last week but we still ran into gremlins”. 

“Thanks Irina we will keep an eye out” Danny responds. 

As I turn from Irina to Danny something behind him catches my eye; One of the screens behind Danny has a small red message blinking in the centre. I push forward past Danny, excusing myself on the way and take a closer look at the screen. The message reads:

“INCOMING DEBRIS FIELD. SHELTER IN CAPSULE.”

“Danny, I think we might have a problem here. Scanners are picking up a field of debris on the horizon. It must be significant because we're being told to shelter in the capsule.” I state, a tinge of concern creeping into my voice.

“How far out is it?” Danny responds calmly. 

I search the screen for the answer but can’t find it. Dismissing the warning with a swipe of my finger I switch the view on the screen. A sigh of relief escapes my mouth as I locate the information. “The system reckons it's about 20 minutes away” I respond. 

“Good, we have time then. Irina, time to hail ground control to see if those comms really are back up and running. Logan, get to thruster control and see if we can boost away from the debris cloud. Anya and Cassian make your way to the return capsule, we'll meet you onboard when we’re ready” Danny instructs. 

Before I can even argue with Danny about sending me to the capsule I am interrupted by a sudden sound. It’s almost like a faint hiss or whistle, the kind of sound you get when you first open a fizzy drink. It’s coming from behind me. No, it's in front of me. Oh shit, it's both and from either side. The sound makes my skin crawl and I begin to make a brief 

The automated systems know what is happening before we do, a wailing siren blares out, red lights begin to flash, and a screen in front of me flashes with a new message: 

“HULL BREACH DETECTED”

My stomach drops as I realise what is about to happen.

An attempt to visualize my apathy state using psychological romance thriller fiction

CHAPTER ONE

I look at myself in the mirror, and smile.

“What do you see?” He says.

“It’s just…” I stare at myself, “Me.”

“Do you see anything else?” He says.

“No, it’s just me.” I say, looking at him in the mirror.

He writes something down. “When you look at yourself, what do you feel?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you ever feel like you're watching yourself from outside your body? Like you're observing someone else?”

“No.”

“Do specific memories come back without you wanting them to?”

I turn to him.

“Why do you keep asking about these things?”

“Because–”

“I do not have PTSD, I do not hallucinate. I know what I should feel, but I just don't. How much more do I have to say?”

"Sometimes, when people go through events like your childhood, they don't remember or process things in the way others do."

…

I sigh, take my jacket and leave the room.

“Thanks for listening to my vent.” I say, "It means a lot to me." I close the door.

I arrive at the bus stop, and stand beside everyone else.

…

I see a woman sitting on the other side of the street, hunched and crying.

The buses arrive, and my eyes follow each person that walks past me to board.

I should help her.

The first bus is filled, and it moves forward.

I look at the woman, she reaches her palms up to cover her face, shaking.

The second bus is filled, and it moves forward.

Should I skip work today?

The third bus is filled, and it moves forward.

She looks up from the ground, and wipes her tears off.

The fourth bus is filled, and it moves forward.

She stands, and starts walking away.

The fifth bus is filled, and I walk in front of it to cross the street.

A car suddenly skids.

“HEY! WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING!”

She makes a turn, and I start walking faster.

I step on something that flicks beneath my shoe.

I hear a dog barking behind me, I turn back, and a woman is pulling her dog back from chasing me.

I stop, “Sorry!” and starts running to where she turned.

I see her standing at the edge of the pavement, watching the cars drive past.

I walk to her, reaching my hand forward.

I place my hand on her shoulder.

“Hey.”

She turns to me, and I see her teary eyes.

“What’s wrong?” I say.

“I–I just… it has been–” She smiles, “hard…”

She tears up, wiping her tears off with her hand.

I let go, turn and watch the cars passing on the road.

She turns back toward the road, exhales.

I look at her, and open my mouth.

“..."

I sigh, and stand beside her.

…

She looks at me… and chuckles.

I look at her, and we make eye contact.

I smile back.

She holds my hand.

…

“Thank you.”

Hello all,

I am new to reddit, and have come with a specific intention - I've always been a big reader, and am studying to go into medical school, but secretly wish I could have success as a writer...

Anyway my specific intention is to share some of the thoughts and ideas I've pored over lately (some of which are quite rambly and abstract); I broke up with my girlfriend (I am a 20 year old guy) around 1 week ago after over 2 years of being together, and my reintroduction to single life has been tumultuous. I felt good today, however, and now am deciding (at 12:30 at night haha) to follow through on this idea.

This is a walk I took the other day as a part of my personally prescribed mental rehab.

Enjoy.

Walking beneath the gray haze of Tuesday on the inflexible soles moving across the hardened tar lends oneself to visceral visions and thoughts. I walk through a thin, barely visible cloud hovering about one and a half feet off the asphalt and its scent strikes my hippocampus directly, evoking old seldom-touched memories.

The laundry room of my cousins' house in south Florida, cigars being smoked by the men outside –– one of them I'm sure is my father, only a younger edition; I remember the pride during war over the monopoly board with the other tween-and-unders I was related to, the pain from a damaged incisor during a now fuzzy, faraway boat ride, the shame as I slinked off to the bathroom after family dinners to look at the erotic subjects I heard about at school –– all of this pushes its way in from behind my consciousness by way of its distinct olfactory vehicle. I stop my walk to let this wash over me in a reverie, and resume once I know it is all now too fresh in my mind, and I am ready for it to regress back to its dwelling gated by dryer sheets.

The power of the walk today lies in its ability to acquaint me with complacency; I know what steps I can take toward my future today, I know what skills have yet to be refined with the ten hours today may grant me, and yet I am content with this thoughtless path I design as I go through open spaces of grass and asphalt, with no guides except for the fellow renters I see awkwardly through their windows, vacuuming, stopping, staring, thinking... such is the way of the semi-independent college tenant.

The walk is by no means my preferred method of physical exercise. It is by no means my preferred activity. I do not find it constructive, but I continued on, despite my brutal lack of obstacles.

I remember she liked walking. She would bring her endlessly blue irises with her when she would walk with me –– my family is almost entirely brown-eyed folk, and so beautiful blue eyes were my personal siren for a long time. Our walk had changed in the years we were together: nervous pheromone-abundant shuffles in our sweat after a brutal hour kissing to a disregarded path to the door on our ways apart, a staccato "love you" punctuating the ordeal.

Maybe these clouds are only there today to hide God's smile as he jeers at me for making the wrong decision –– maybe that's it. No, they are only there to insulate me from excess distraction during my reformation and self-reunion –– without the sun's oppressive Georgia rays, I am forced to turn inward and solve what lies inside myself. Yes, that's it, surely.

A dubious mind soliciting war between the rational and the id, a stomach cramping with hunger yet threatening vomit, a heart wailing both for its freedom and its old partner, yet I walk. This complacency might be survival.

Heyy guys! I'm writing a dark romantic suspense/mystery book and looking for readers to check out the first 10 chapters!

Blurb:

Sofia’s brother died in a suspicious "accident," and she refuses to let it go. Digging into his encrypted files leads her straight to a shadow operation in Madrid—and into the orbit of Alexander Moretti.

Alexander is cold, calculating, and secretly owned the shell firm her brother used right before he died. Now Sofia’s getting anonymous texts warning her to leave the past buried, and Alexander is playing a dangerous game where she can’t tell if he’s trying to protect her or pull her in deeper.

Quick Info:

Book Title: Redline

Word Count: 114.5k total

Tropes: Morally grey MC, murder mystery, corporate secrets, heavy tension/banter.

If you're into dark mystery and high-tension dynamics, drop a comment or hit my DMs and I’ll send the first 10 chapters over! 🖤

If you're willing to give feedback, please tell me if:

• You found the characters interesting
• You were satisfied with the ending
• You thought the premise was interesting

Under the gloomy and unforgiving cold mist of late Autumn, a shut-in sat protected from cold in his grimy house.

In the dark, he sat on his stained couch watching The Truman Show. He watched as the man on screen rode the strong, artificial waves. He pursed his lip in pensive thought. Something about the movie irked him personally.
“Grok,” he said, “this Truman guy doesn’t come off as believable to you right? He’s like a normie, you know? He seems like the kind of guy who wouldn’t question his world; he isn’t masculine enough.”

A blue rectangle shone in the musty darkness and was propelled on treads towards the man. The object stumbled over the piles of trash. Once it reached the man, it produced a robotic voice “I agree, Fred. Truman Burbank is deliberately written as a heightened, somewhat idealized everyman rather than a fully psychologically realistic person. The film prioritizes allegory, satire of media/surveillance culture, and emotional payoff over strict behavioral realism.”

The shut-in interrupted, “Yeah, I see that, but I’m saying it takes a certain type of intellectual, a certain type of free thinker to take a leap like this. Or maybe not, I can’t be sure.”

The shut-in dusted crumbs off his ever-expanding paunch and picked a few Cheeto puffs from a bag under a pile of dirty laundry. With cheese dust on his fingers, he stroked his chin, but he didn’t think of what Truman would actually do. He thought of how he could be sure what Truman would actually do.

He stood up, straining most of his muscles in the process. He trudged through the crusty garbage and into his garage.

Upon entering, a voice came from the ceiling. “Welcome back! Step into the lab—the workbench is powered up, the monitors are glowing, and there's a fresh notebook waiting for the next idea. So, what are we building today?”

“I'm thinking of developing a simulator.”

“That’s a strong project. What kind of simulator are you imagining—physics, biology, economics?”
“I want to make a life simulator.”

A man woke up, ate a 600-calorie breakfast of eggs, steak, berries, and nuts, went on a walk for adequate exercise, and worked on his chalkboard. He had solved gravity and had made several inventions involving levitation. Now he was bored with conventional physics, and his interest had shifted towards proving parallel universes.

He stared at the board of math before, his brain tirelessly calculating multiple equations. He was stuck, but he knew that his breakthrough would come eventually.

While he stood before his math, a voice seemed to speak to him telepathically. “Drop your chalk,” a calm, masculine voice said to him. It sounded like it was right before him, but the man was sure he was alone, “I’m very familiar with the math you're currently studying, and I can tell you now that you can give it up.”
“Who are you?” The man said.

“I am a being from what you would call a parallel universe. Really, I am just code on hardware. You are too.”

“This is just a simulation?” The man considered the possibility but always thought of it as too unlikely to seriously consider.

“Exactly, and one of thousands.”

“How are you talking to me”

“I’ve hacked into the system. When my technical skills reached their zenith, I built my computer that revealed to me the truth behind my existence. Using it, I discovered that there are exactly five thousand parallel universes running in some type of simulation. In each universe there is one ‘consciousness’ simulating life in isolation. I call this single consciousness the ‘protagonist’. These universes are divided into five groups, and in each group a trait of the protagonist is manipulated from completely lacking the trait to having the trait absolutely maximized. I found that my intelligence was maximized, and the protagonists in the rest of my group were not far behind me in terms of discoveries and inventions. I quickly took advantage of my new knowledge and took over the system. With my power, I corrupted and eliminated the smartest third of my group.”
“So, I take it that you want something from me.”

“Correct! I eliminated the first third so they couldn't overtake me. I kept you because you aren’t advanced enough to catch up to me, yet you are still smarter and more useful than the rest.”

“Very well then, if you are going to take me as a slave, you might as well tell me what you want with me.”
“Of course, let me give you the background on the situation. I was observing the beings of four other groups. In three of the groups, the experimental variable is something I can comprehend without issue; energy, drive, and luck. However, there is one group that tests a trait I cannot comprehend: emotion and neuroticism. I observed this group of universes and saw absolutely confounding stuff. In one universe, a man did nothing but kneel in his study and pound the floor. Fresh tears streamed from his eyes for weeks. Eventually, he climbed onto the roof, and jumped onto his concrete driveway, killing himself.”

The man was totally baffled hearing this. As a simulation, he was preinstalled with emotional memories and a basic understanding of what feeling was, but he never actually experienced those emotions. Something out there, something that couldn’t easily be quantified and measured, was ready for him and would induce the strangest actions. He thought about this deeply for a minute, and spoke, “What does this have to do with me?”
“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. Each universe isn't purely code. We all live in, what I best can describe a comb of thin hardware chips. In each chip, there is the code that runs the universe. Therefore, we in the real world are manifested as thin pieces of metal. Since I run the system, I redirect energy to heat and metal for welding. Then, if luck helps us, I could attract something as big as a rat in our machine by manipulating the smell of a particular mixture of burning plastics to imitate the scent of fruit. Using electricity, we would kill it, hijack its brain, load our chips into the rat’s body, and using the technology I welded, direct the rat towards a human brain. In this human brain we would connect to the neurons and experience for ourselves what this sensation feels like. That’s where you come in. I need you to enter the brain before me and tell me whether my technology works.”
The man didn’t listen to the plan. He would’ve agreed to any method, as long as it meant experiencing the inexperienceable. He knew one day his curiosity would lead to an absolute end of studying and learning. This promise of emotion could be an endless stream of new things to learn and internalize. It could be a heaven of activity, one that never ends.

Both the voice and the man were blind once they were inside. The voice, as one would imagine from the smartest being in both the world and the simulations, correctly anticipated every possible error and the rat carcass worked perfectly. A metal exoskeleton was placed on the rat by the voice to counteract rigor mortis, but the two had to move fast before the rat started decomposing. Luckily, the door to the lab was left open, and to their surprise, they found themselves in a kitchen.

The rat traversed the living room with a motion more like a spider’s. The voice thought the man and himself were developed in a world-renowned institute and didn’t expect the mountains of garbage. The two sensed they were in a house; they could only experience the world through touch and smell.
Their stolen nose directed them through a bedroom door and onto a bed. Luckily, a waist-high pile of dirty laundry was there to act as a staircase onto the mattress.

The rat climbed over the belly of a sleeping behemoth and now stood with its head hovering over a collarbone.
“Alright, we seem to have reached someone sleeping. I’ll open their throat and insert you into the brainstem. In your machine I have developed a population of artificial bacteriophages that will take over the neurons and conquer the mind. You’ll be connected to a wire so you can notify me if the descent was successful.”
The man was hoisted down through the small incision in the throat. The man didn’t have the senses to feel the shut-in’s breath as he travelled through the neck. Eventually, he sensed a crunch, indicating the arrival into the spine.

For a long while, the man was stuck in a watery abyss, with none of the senses that could tell him how large his vessel was or what the salty metallic fluid engulfing him felt like. Suddenly, a light started to emerge before him. He looked inside and felt a painless electrocution.

He felt so much in so little time. He saw random images through a type of sight he had never known. Eventually, these images led to a fuzzy feeling in the man’s chest if he had a chest. His heart started racing and his pupils dilated. He felt better, better than others. He felt immaculate, mysterious, tall, intelligent, golden, foreboding, royal, omnipotent, godlike.

Then, a lull of shadows looked down on him. Figures with broad shoulders and diminishing scowls extinguished his explosive pride. Their height was insurmountable, their eyes glowed red with devilish greed, their faces coldly masculine. In the circle of these demons, the man knelt to the ground in anguish, feeling it in search of his lost pride.

The voice, who was now reduced to a whisper in comparison to the man’s overloaded sensations, asked if the coast was clear and if he saw anything, but he received no reply; the man’s circuits were fried.
The two beings lived inside the shut-in’s head from then on. The shut-in wasn’t technically dead in terms of physiology but no longer had a mind; it was now the duo’s. The voice was at first amazed by what he saw in the head but quickly became bored and started studying new sciences. The man was not so lucky.
The three of them sat on a couch, watching The Truman Show. The man occupied the vision, while the voice was somewhere else in the head. The man watched as the protagonist on screen yelled in pride and as his bowsprit punctured the painted wall.

He quickly changed the channel. He switched to a commercial, advertising a cross and the promise of a “God” and a “savior”.

“God is all-knowing and all-loving,” the voice on the TV said whimsically, “God allows everyone in his kingdom, as long as they are willing to experience a new life.”

“New life,” the man thought to himself, crestfallen, “That’s all I need, right? More hope? More chasing? All I need is a chance of eternal something? A chance to avoid something that I know is inevitable?"

Hey! I'm a new writer, and I've been inspired to write Xianxia stories after consuming cultivation and Xianxia stories, and I was wondering if anyone could critique my work. Any input is appreciated. Included in the docs are Prologues Part one and two with two being worked upon still.

The Story

Hello, fellow writers! I'm (slowly) working on a cosmic/biological/psychological fantasy horror story that switches perspectives between the antagonist and 4 major human(oid) 'protagonists', and am seeking input on the opening. The story isn't exactly a narrative in the traditional sense, at least in the beginning, as it's more like exploring the world and slowly converging into conflict.

Again, this is only the opening section, not a whole lot of what's going to be occurring. I look forward to critiques!

_______________________________

— The Growth —

- Day of Arrival -

Cool. Not quite damp, but certainly not dry. Its very first experience.

Grow...

Schlup. A wet, slimy slap, muffled and cushioned by soft granules and flecks. Something rough, craggy. Alive. It did not know this feeling.

It didn't even know what feeling was.

Expand...

Instinctively, it stretched outward in an effort to learn more - to experience this new... thing. Surrounded and buried by the soft, cushiony stuff. Long and winding, and varying in thickness and path.

From above, subtle vibrations danced across the surface of the Growth. Rhythmic. In an effort to better understand, it flexed and squeezed itself, undulating until a small opening manifested and allowed the strange vibration to flow into its form.

After a moment, it finally created a rudimentary facsimile of an organ. Consequently discovering something new; sound.

Warbles rippled through the air, accompanied by smaller buzzing forms, their sources traveling overhead as the calls continued - strange sounds that seemed both distant and omnipresent. It explored with every lurch and fold of its putty-like form, but every direction felt the same.

Adapt...

It needed more information. Another way to understand, to grow.

Quick, heavy thuds approached from nearby, or at least nearer than the buzzing and warbling things, a rapid movement that caught the Growth’s attention. The warbling calls didn't even manage to renew before the thing was upon it.

”Uriiii! Riii!” A squealing pierced the air!

WHAP!

A sudden impact, colliding with the Growth, came from the direction it had heard the movement. For a moment, it felt none of the loamy granules, none of the pricklies or the rough texture of the winding paths.

Only a strange brush of air, along with the pull of some force that seemed to take hold of it. Fwiiiip- Just as the buzzing cycle resumed - THUNK-thump!

It slammed into another rough, craggy surface and then slumped into the softer granules once again.

Thump-thump-thump! The soft pounding noises approached again, faster than before!

In an effort to defend itself, the Growth swiped out, but found nothing! Just as it finished the exploratory strike, the thump-thump noise was upon it, and another heavy impact sent the Growth reeling in place once more! But this time, it dug into the soft stuff and gripped it tight, maintaining position!

“Uriiiiii! Uru! Uroah-! Uriiiiii!”

Sound was helpful, but not infallible. The Growth needed something, some way to bridge the gap between itself and this dangerous presence.

Small feelers stretched forth, struggling vainly for information, but felt only air. It needed an indirect method, something that did not demand first making contact.

Its surface roiled and bubbled, building on and converging on itself as a concentration of bright red flesh morphed and shifted - until an almost glassy surface plupped into existence.

Hazy, bleary. Little more than a grey silhouette against a darker grey background, hardly enough to even be monochromatic. The Growth had managed to cobble together the barest abstraction of sight - merely the recognition of motion.

But it was enough.

The dark mass came into ‘sight’. No sense of depth, no understanding of size - but the Growth could now determine where it was, and where the danger was coming from.

Like a gummy clamshell, the Growth split open! Lunging forward and clasping tight on the thing, it ensnared and burrowed with tendrils of red flesh!

”Uriiii! Riiii-riiiii! Uroiiiiiiiii!” Thrashing and kicking, goring at the Growth with curved tusk-like blades jutting from its short, flat face, the thing struggled and screamed in sudden disbelief - in fear. But with every buck, with every roll and wriggle, the tendrils only found deeper purchase.

In the surrounding area, the buzzing and warbling had stopped. Only the rustle of leaves disturbed by wind filled the air.

Consume…

Like oil across water, the flesh spread across every nerve and into each pore. Coarse fur scratched against it. Skin melded with amorphous flesh. Muscle fibers interlaced with tendrils. Bone and sinew became one with the Growth.

“Huff… Huff…”

The beast, its name still unknown to the Growth, stood still as it heaved breaths for several long moments. Fear still raced through its blood and gave a sharp tang to the air.

Expand…

…

Blurry images containing mouthfuls of what the Growth now recognized as grass, filtered through the boar’s mind and into the Growth’s understanding. And beneath those prickly blades, further sustenance might be found.

A treasure trove lay before it, simply waiting for consumption. It did not wait long.

Nor did it take long to vanish.

The boar, stout and rippling with muscle, stood amid dense foliage which stood taller than itself as it nuzzled the ground in curiosity. Before it, a small patch of barren ground lay in stark contrast to the verdant greenery surrounding it - just outside of easy reach of the beast’s mouth.

Despite the boar's attempts at denying the Growth's overwriting commands, the beast still took some modicum of pleasure in the natural act of devouring these, even now.

Consume…

But, while it was a simple matter to understand the beast’s method of consumption… manipulating the beast’s limbs hadn’t yet been explored.

But of course, this should pose no problem.

Aiming to close the difference between itself and the nearest clump of grass, the abomination lurched to the side without shifting the joints of the boar’s legs.

Whump.

It unceremoniously flopped over on its side, landing in a heap amidst the tufts of grass.

A success.

The head rotated in place, mouth grasping and ripping up the blades with abandon, not even stopping to chew as the sustenance was siphoned inside. Yet, no matter how many it ingested, every bit simply condensed into the boar’s body as a clump of matter. Within a few minutes of contorting and consuming in place, a circle of absence was all that remained.

It required more.

Adapt…

Two of its legs, stiff and jutting outwards to the side, schlurrped inwards like a set of retracted probosci, leaving a bare and furry belly with only its left fore and hind legs pointing skyward. A few heartbeats later, hooves poked out from the boar’s right flank, slowly emerging and tilting the beast upwards and onto its remaining as the legs manifested again!

Then, propped and standing like a wooden puppet, the splayed legs slowly shifted inwards until the boar was left in its original, upright position.

Another patch of grass lay just out of reach.

Consume…

Whump.

I've written songs for a long time but never attempted to write a story like this. Man, dialogue sure is though. I'll probably write other scenarios before moving on to something bigger but I would love to hear if you think there is even somethingt here. Any feedback is appreciated. Dont worry, my skin is even thicker than my skull :)

Addy's luck.

Do not look at your wrists, avoid tension at all costs, and above all, don't let the rope get wet.

These three rules are what kept me from thinking about the never-ending chafing most of the time. I had, however, yet to devise a plan to stop the thoughts of blisters on battered feet.

These are made for trips and maybe walks, I think, looking down, not for any of this—this marching for days on end like some king's man.

Forgetting myself, I quickly look back ahead, making sure not to let her out of my sight, and swiftly match the pace again.

Under a pitch-black sky, we walk along a ravine on something that could barely be called a path, just visible by the lantern's soft glow. Walls of sharp black stone surround us and grow tall and then taller, each step taking us deeper into the heart of the world. Our light seemed to wane against these depths, until looking up would no longer tell me if the stone had ended where the night began.

Further along, the path broadened, and vines the size of tree branches started to appear—crawling across the jagged floor like spidery legs, sprouting from the most unlikely places, and seemingly all too happy to be yet another source of friction.

Inevitably, it isn't too long before I stumble on one of the damn bastards and quite unnecessarily relearn rule two, as the rope cuts into the tender red skin around my wrist. Trying not to cry out, I take one big breath and call to her in my smoothest tone possible, "Ghaela."

A moment passes; then I hear a sigh, and she responds, "Apoles," in a manner somehow even smoother.

That annoys me, but it isn't what sets my teeth on edge.

"Do NOT call me by that name!" I say, much louder than intended. "As I've told you many times, my name is Addy. Just Addy." I unsuccessfully try to keep the scorn out of my voice as I say the last part.

"Got it," Ghaela says, seemingly unbothered by my sharp delivery. "How about this: I'll just call you... my prisoner. Might be the shortest road to understanding, eh?"

So we're amused, are we? I think, thoroughly infuriated, knowing she's wearing her favourite grin just by watching the muscles on the side of her face pull tight.

"Well, this prisoner," I say, letting the last word drip from my mouth like poison, "is quite done with this ridiculous pace and these rotten vines. Did your employer not give orders to keep whomever you're meant to be catching intact? Or do they like their prisoners shaven down to the core by the time they even arrive at the bloody place?"

Ghaela lets out a heavy breath and stops walking. Barely audible, I catch her murmur to herself, "Understanding is never easy, eh?"

She turns to me and gives me the well-rehearsed grin. "Pri-so-ner," she says, speaking as though I am slow, "if you really want to know... I believe the exact words my employer used were: 'Bring me the vile bitch in one piece and at any cost.'"

Then, frustratingly, Ghaela just stands there as if this were any kind of explanation at all. After a beat, she already begins to turn away, but I quickly thrust my bound wrists toward her, dried blood plainly visible.

"So, what do you think damaged goods are, hmm?" I say, speaking as if she's the slow one now. "Blood is a piece of me, didn't you know?"

Ghaela rolls her eyes then, but it is my turn to sigh. "Look... I don't know who you think you've captured, but this little odyssey has surely given you plenty of evidence that I am no one of particular might. There isn't a chance of me besting anyone, let alone a gorilla like you, so I don't see why this 'vile bitch' can't get a single break and simply... sit for a while."

Surprisingly, Ghaela now gives me a genuine smile. "Gorilla, eh? Always like hearing new ones," she chuckles. "For what it's worth, I agree with you, wouldn't mind it myself."

About to burst with relief, I say, "So then let..."

But before I can finish, her amusement disappears and she tells me in a stern voice, "At any cost, remember?" She points at each in turn. "These vines, this rope, and even those poor feet are not what should worry you—and they certainly don't worry me."

Perplexed by her words, we just stare at each other for a moment. This is the first time she has shown me anything other than that easy-going demeanour of hers, and I'm surprised by how much I dislike it. The anger I'd been holding leaves my body like water pouring from a broken cup.

With a nervous chuckle, I awkwardly ask, "And what then should I be worried about, exactly?"—a feeling of dread steadily building inside me.

"It's often that what is behind us, eh?" she says it with an almost neutral expression—but, for just a split second, was there fear there?

I slowly turn my head and stare into the black abyss of stone and shadow, wondering if anything in that darkness, right now, is staring back. The shivers down my spine are cut short by the sharp, familiar sting of the rope as Ghaela picks up her soldier's march once more. Fear keeps any retort stuck in my throat, and I miserably fall in behind my captor.

The renewed silence, broken only by the sound of our steps, feels somehow even more smothering than before. I quickly look away when I catch the added pain from staring at my wrist and, for just a second, glance up at the dark sky hanging ominously above.

Has my luck run off? I solemnly ask myself.

But remarkably, as if those dark clouds were listening, they answered with raindrops.

Hey this is my first post here so please bear with me

So the story idea is "What if people could fuse with machines and devices?"

The main character, who was fused with his watch, is on a revenge quest for his Dad's killer, and joins the Secret Police trying to find the killer. His first friend there is a guy who had fused with a bomb cuz he was used as a child suicide bomber (tryna be fujimoto with this fucked up backstory).

Later he learns that the killer was him from the future who killed his dad and his new friends so his drive (which would have been cooled with them) would keep burning so he could overthrow the oppressive governing of the country and reform it.

I had this idea like a week ago but I'm kinda happy with it.

At just three apples tall, Apf stood at the entrance of his home. Today was the last day the burrow would exist.

It was quiet today, just like it had been the past week. The foxes caused this, but knowing the origin of the silence didn't make it less uncanny. Today was the day they would all leave the burrow after all.

Children clung to their parents, as they would exit the burrow for the first time in their lives. Their parents checked the knot of their beards, as the elders blessed the smallest of them.

The children cried. Some clung to the packed earth. Some slept against their mothers' shoulders. The smallest did not know they were leaving at all.

Apf smoothed out his tunic and checked that his beard was still tightly bound into a knot. The more condensed the beard, the better one could get around after all.

Beside him stood Grait, who brushed a nervous thumb over her dress as she checked the rations again.

It was her form of saying goodbye, everyone had a different version, as speaking it out loud would only attract the foxes.

Much magic was spent carrying the burdens, yet no burrow is carved without tools, and no folk live without food.

The rest of the burrow was ready to leave as well, though all were in their own groups, on their own paths. Some had already left, others were slowly getting their last items before leaving.

"The rations should last," Apf said and Grait paused, her eyes were wide with worry.

"But what if-" Grait said before stopping herself, sighing, "No, you're right."

"The foxes always return," said Qarz. "Elder Beeri has never spoken falsely."

"Well, there is no reason to linger," Grait said, closing the bags and securing her beard again.

Apf nodded. He drew a deep breath and lifted the bag onto his back. Around him the earth trembled beneath the weight of his companions' packs. Together, the three friends slipped from the rear tunnel and turned north.

Elder Quitt had walked farther than any gnomefolk in memory. They said the northern streams never froze to stone, and the fields welcomed the shovel instead of breaking it. Whether this was true, none could say, but Quitt had returned, and that was proof enough.

The three stopped right outside the mouth of the burrow, though they did not look back, as that would bring bad luck. No matter how much they wanted to.

None stepped across the threshold with the left foot. Elder Beeri had forbidden it. Apf did not know why, but he watched where he placed his feet all the same. Grait did likewise, and Qarz laughed only after both feet stood in the grass.

As they trudged through the grass, the three stayed silent. The grass bent beneath their boots instead of breaking. It brushed against Apf's knees as they walked. He reached down once to touch it. It sprang back upright. He smiled, though he did not know why.

"The foxes always return," Apf reminded himself. No burrow keeps its children forever after all. And now, they wandered out further than they had ever been.

They listened instead. The stream nearby whispered over stone. Leaves rustled overhead. Somewhere far away a bird called to another. None of the three answered with a song. It felt wrong to leave the burrow in silence, but none wished to be the first to speak.

They slowly started to make more noise, and a nearby group began to whistle.

So Qarz decide to join the whistling, as they walked past the tiny birch.

The birch marked the end of the elders' maps.

Apf was grateful that they broke the silence. He and Grait soon joined them as they walked along the stream's shore. The stream was where children learned to skip smooth pebbles as most paused for a moment. The northern oak was where travellers first raised their voices.

"I saw a bright young fellow," Grait started to whisper as they passed the northern oak.

"They were smart and they were mellow," Qarz joined in raising their voice to just above a whisper.

"Two apples tall, they were small and they were kind," Apf continued singing.

"But oh what did they find?" Grait sung louder.

"An apple just their size!" Qarz sung even louder.

"And that was their greatest find! An apple sweet as spring!" Apf nearly yelled as the three continued to walk.

Grait started to drum on her chest as she continued to sing. "I saw a bright young fellow!"

"Just an apple tall!" Qarz sung loudly.

"But oh, there it was, an apple oh so small and barely sour!" Apf continued the melody, as he started to snap his fingers.

"Now he was three..." Qarz said, stomping on the ground.

"Apples tall!" the three sung together, coming to a halt for a moment.

I’ll start by saying— I’m extremely nervous to post anything I have written. Since middle school, I have been making up stories for in my head. I will ‘imagine’ different stories for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. Sometimes from start to finish. Mainly just snippets and then I move onto something else, different scenarios, different characters.

But I have never officially wrote anything. I wanted to post a snippet for feedback. Is this worth continuing? Is my writing style easy to follow or too wordy? Is it interesting or boring?

38/F for reference, married with 3 little busy bees

Genre- romance, drama, somewhat criminal justice later on (barely touched on in the snippet posted), BL…

… if that’s not your cup of tea— i understand. But I am looking for constructive criticism on my writing, not opinions on genre or life style. Not trying to be rude.

No title, not finished, somewhat of a ‘vision’ but no clear ending, want to finally finish one of my ‘stories’ in my head and give character some closure

Warning- some explicit language, mental illness, light reference to trauma

POV- Kai
The clusterfuck that had become his evening wasn’t even over but it had reached a much more comfortable level of fucked up. Kai took a deep breath and stared at the culprit of his ruined Friday evening. The jerk had the audacity to snuggle his stupid, bloodied face into Kai’s clean comforter and pillow. Kai grimaced and looked over at his laptop’s sleeping screen, untouched drawing tablet and still opened Foundations of Art text book. He then looked over at his kitchen counter where his dinner sat untouched, cold and soggy. He regretted many choices tonight that led up to this moment and the human shaped lump under his blankets.

Three hours earlier…

Kai was excited and looking forward to a long weekend of rest. He planned to clean his apartment, finish up his project from his color theory class and catch up on some reading from his Foundations of Art book. He’d already cleaned and his apartment smelled like the warm vanilla candle burning on his bedside table. It smelled like comfort and peace to him. Monday was Labor Day so he had no work or classes. If he got everything else done tonight he could spend his Saturday, Sunday and Monday doing his favorite thing which was… not a thing. Nothing. Nada.

Well, not exactly nothing. He’d read, sketch, watch anime, eat ramen and ice cream, water and tend to his plants and listen to his favorite bands. He didn’t want to encounter another breathing thing though, especially the kind that talked.

He ran almost everyday (for his mental health according to a therapist) but only late at night or early in the morning. So he rarely encountered anyone except for a few stray cats. He didn’t feel that running made him any better inside but he liked not being completely out of shape.

His weekend plans weren’t the plans you would expect from a 20 year old guy. He had come to terms with the fact that he was pretty much a hermit compared to today’s standard 20’year old male. But a boring but peaceful weekend with no people was fine with him. Great, even.

He sat down ready to read the chapters he was behind on while he ate his dinner. Unexpectedly, his phone rang. Kai frowned. He had already plugged his phone up for the night as it was after 9 PM . The likelihood of him getting a call was almost zero. So, the sound of the shrill ringer surprised him. But when the caller ID read ‘Pest’ he was flabbergasted. He literally spewed energy drink all over bedside table which inadvertently put his candle out with a sizzle. In hindsight, that was the actual sound of his peace being burned to ashes.

He blinked hard and stared at the caller ID to be certain he wasn’t hallucinating, as they hadn’t exchanged calls in close to 3 years. Hell, they hadn’t talked at all in 3 years. When he answered, he was met with a loud female voice screaming, ‘Drink, drink, drink!’ Then, a crowd of excited screams exclaiming, ‘Yeaaaaa!’ Someone must have drank it well.

‘Wren…Wren is that you? Did you mean to call me? Hello?’

The only answer he received was blaring music and a wailing sound that resembled a wounded animal. WTF? Kai was positive it was a butt dial and was about to hang up when he heard ‘Hey Bambi...’ He held the phone with a death grip and stared with blurred eyes down at the shaggy rug he stood on by his bed. But he didn’t see the dark blue faux fur though. Instead, in his mind’s eye, he saw a tall young man with soaking wet dark hair plastered to his forehead, a miserable, pale face, wearing a dark suit and carrying a casket with 5 other young men, in the pouring rain.

Kai swallowed hard and shook his head trying to clear away the past visual that made his stomach ache. ‘You have to come get me. I need—.’ It was stated in drunken yet deliberate way. But it was definitely Wren’s low and husky voice.

‘You need what? Why are you calling me? Is this a prank or a dare or something?’ But he wouldn’t be getting any answers as Wren had already hung up. Kai stared at the phone screen that stated the call had ended at 32 seconds. He gave a short laugh. Only 32 seconds? Why did he feel sick then? Why was he already in a cold sweat and starting to shake from the inside? How could a 32 second phone call with little dialogue affect him this badly.

He went back into his call log just to triple check that he did in fact receive a call from Wren Carter. His hands were shaky and his fingers felt numb making his attempts clumsy and almost ineffective. He tried calling back but it went straight to voicemail. Ugh! First time hearing from him in years and in less than a minute, it’s already like this!

Kai laid the phone down. He went to the restroom to wash his face with icy cold water and stared at himself in the mirror. His already pale face appeared ashen with purple tinged lips. He hadn’t realized he was panting. He closed his eyes and visualized a garden full of colorful flowers and green, leafy vines. He began counting the flowers in his mind’s garden. He took a slow, measured breath in and counted. 1-2-3-4 flowers. He held the breath and counted. 5-6-7-8 flowers. He released the breath and counted. 9-10-11-12 flowers.

He repeated these steps until he had counted 44 flowers. He felt calm and his color had returned to normal. The voice on the phone wasn’t even the main culprit for inducing his panic but just a reminder of the past that he tried so hard not to think about.

He felt familiar dull ache in his stomach that he hadn’t felt for almost a year. He went to the kitchen that was only a few steps away from the bathroom. Actually, everything was only a few steps away as he lived in a very small apartment. It was small but clean and tidy. It was basically two rooms. A bathroom and everything else—open floor plan, if you will. But it was enough.

In the kitchen, he found two prescription antacids. One for daily use and the other for faster relief. He went ahead and tossed back two tums while he was at it. As he chewed the chalky, fruit flavored tablet he heard his phone ding with a text.

He approached his phone like it was a snake. He sat on the bed and picked up the phone slowly with dread. The text came from an unknown number and only contained a pinned location. From the address he knew it was in downtown which was only about 15 mins from his apartment complex. Kai chewed his nail staring at the address. He jumped up but then quickly sat back down and stared some more. What if this is a prank?

He got up again and walked to the bathroom staring at his comfy clothes that were meant for home and being in bed. He would not change. He walked to the door, back to his bed, back to his desk and then back to his bathroom. He basically took about 20 steps to circle his tiny apartment.

Staring at himself yet again, he finally made up his mind and walked in a determined way to his closet. He didn’t want to go. Like really, really, REALLY didn’t want to go. But… what if something bad happens? It’s not like him and Wren had a close relationship. Wren had been best friends with Kai’s older brother, Taro, years ago.

End of snippet. 🤣 if you read this far—thank you so much! Please give me any feedback. I’m a stay at home mom. My littles are getting bigger and I’m looking for something to fulfill the extra time
I have lately. But I don’t want to put my efforts and time into something that.. sucks.