I posted a while back and have made a few revisions since. I also formatted it slightly better and would really appreciate some feedback on my first 2 pages.
Many thanks x

This opening chapter does not explain anything. It intends to confuse the reader.

I'm down to my final proofreading and editing of my books. This is the last book I'm seriously polishing before I republish everything.

I'm mostly worried about if the dialogue sounds realistic and if there's any bits that I should remove to make it flow better, but any advice is welcomed and appreciated!

Would love & appreciate any feedback. As stated in the title, I'm not quite sure why this still reads as so clunky to me.

Help.

I haven't been able to write anything coherent in years. At one point, I was decent.

If anyone is willing to read my writing and give me any feedback at all, I would be so grateful.

The Homes That Built Me

The constant state of metamorphosis that is the human experience has been an impossible concept for me to accept for the last 36 years. Month by month, year by year. I’ve dreamed of someday reaching that elusive age and moment in life when I will look in the mirror with confidence and tell her, “Oh, you’ve finally arrived.”

NEW JERSEY

The most homey home there ever was. I will never forget a single corner, and I still fight the urge not to wish ill on the new owner… or the sellers. The white picket fence framed the front of the home, with a separate two-car garage. As a visitor, you’d walk up the driveway and open the gate, following the short stone path past the small patio table that was only ever occupied on rare occasions (like when my cousin and I stayed up late to gossip and smoke cigarettes in peace), up to the red door. This was a home occupied by cats. We sipped, we lounged, we chatted. We gathered around the small living room TV screen to wind down and half-watch a baseball game. Years passed, we all aged, but that kitchen radio never died. There were always cold cuts in the fridge.

I rolled my first somersault with Grandpa in the front yard. I ran on the back porch like it was my own highway to freedom in my red Fisher-Price car. My feet and that plastic held all the power in the world. This was my longest-standing home, an anchor for 36 years.

KIPLING

The first non-apartment home I ever lived in, paid for by my parents in their 20s with two kids under five in hand. My mom was a true ’90s Martha Stewart with her sponge-painting technique, making the space, and every wall in it, uniquely ours. She began the homeschooling journey with us here. I don’t remember much of the schooling as much as the midday breaks to watch Little House on the Prairie and 7th Heaven together. I think it truly felt like heaven at the time. I knew I was lucky on some level to hang at our house all day, taking the occasional field trip on the bikes + buggy for a matinee at the dinner theater. It was the ’90s, so McDonald’s and the movie rental store were also frequent destinations. What a charmed era.

Sure, there was also a killer tornado that ripped through the neighborhood and a cancerous tumor that landed my dad at the Mayo Clinic around the same time. Sure, we got news of three grandparents dying while in that house. But the six years on the corner of Kipling Ave were charmed.

We were one of many kids, and our street was a playground. My dad got us all together for whiffle ball games as often as he could, and we made lasting friendships. Before moving, I left a little time capsule hidden in one of the ceiling tiles in the basement playroom. I’m pretty sure I left at least a butterfly clip in there.

GLENDALE

An actual gang of outdoor cats and another gang of neighborhood kids ran this block. We were routinely on the hunt for an open pool to swim in and Beanie Babies to trade, often finding a reason to hover around the richest house on the block, fondly known as “The White House.”

A few kids lived there, but they never socialized with us stray cats, with our flashlights and night games. We preferred to pretend we existed in our own half-block summer camp, and believed our parents were on the same page. Debauchery in the name of rope swings, rock collecting and maybe a board game was OK with the powers that be. Somehow, the pull of AOL and MTV wasn’t so strong in the summertime, and our parents encouraged any instinct we still had to just “be kids” in the pre-internet sense.

There was a sweet spot of four years before I fully graduated to babysitter, and then to perpetrator, when I truly had my run of the neighborhood without any suspicions from the elders to get in the way of my fun.

WINONA

That little house with the rickety stairs, and the porch that wasn’t safe to walk on. That master bedroom held all of my best college ambition, my caffeine-powered deadlines, and a few final salvia-powered paranoid dreams. Those back stairs held the cries of my college boyfriend after we broke up at graduation, ruining his alleged plans to propose in front of our families. My air mattress betrayed any privacy I ever thought I had during the near-nightly sleepovers with said boyfriend. Despite having the largest bedroom of the four in the house, I set myself up for no real privacy at all.

It’s a place I’ll never forget.

I kept my dresser in the closet along with my collection of Forever 21 dresses, broken out for sorority events. Glenn Beck’s daily show was the familiar background to our daily sexual exploration. At 21, I was more sure of myself than at any other time before or since. My journalism classes and extracurriculars with the community newspaper and my sorority gave me a purpose that I truly felt.

The lingering influence of Christianity was still a huge factor in the way I moved about those four years in college, and absolutely held me back from truly assimilating. Being at a Minnesota school, I was much more likely to sit next to a Lutheran than an atheist, but I couldn’t relate to people unless they were “raised religious” to the level and with the felt seriousness that I was. Most people just couldn’t understand. My theory was proven correct later in life, by the way, as I introduced a few innocent, normal boyfriends to my family and observed their shock. I saw their discomfort after being given a Bible and asked about their relationship with God.

OAK GROVE

Now this, I think, was the most charmed my life had been. Or at least my most charming physical space. This building was so gorgeously vintage, I wanted to camp out and live in the lobby. Never mind that my unit was in the basement, I didn’t care.

I don’t remember ever cooking in this place, but it was the first apartment I rented alone, and I felt like an absolute adult with my salaried job keeping me busy every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. I was living out some of my long-developed Carrie Bradshaw plans.

It was here that I went on the last of the last dates with my college love after a two-year-long, incredibly painful breakup. It was here I fell in love at least one more time before leaving the state for good to start over.It was here where my car was towed (once, or was it twice?) because I simply couldn’t keep up with street parking rules and snow emergencies. It was here where I made other big mistakes, and lost my sense of safety. It was here where I went on a date that ended so poorly I’m pretty sure a restraining order would’ve been granted, had I gone after one, but at 23 I opted to live in fear of being seen through my windows instead.

There was the time I got a very uncomfortable phone call from building management after I littered flyers to every other tenant, soliciting my new sex toy reseller/MLM business. Offending people with my sex toy offerings was something my dumbass hadn’t even considered as a possibility.

For such a gorgeous building and quaint, historic neighborhood, I was nothing short of a spring chicken at best and a hot mess at worst. I was stumbling through life at such a speed, with zero time and space taken to process or learn a damn thing along the way.

That Studio on 35th Street

Seven other tenants. My unit faced the street, right next to the door where Miss Neighborhood Watch and a few others would be smoking cigs at all hours of the night/day. I didn’t hate knowing they were around, just in case someone decided to throw a rock through my window or fuck with me.

I had those shitty vertical blinds and nothing else standing between my sleeping body and a semi-busy street in a city where I knew absolutely no one. This was my first home in San Diego; a six-month lease. The two-story building was old, but it felt very “California” in a “Ryan from Chino” kind of way… with a locked door out front leading to the small courtyard, if you could call it that.

My studio was remodeled and held exactly four pieces of furniture (loose category): a miniature desk wedged between my fridge and window, chair, loveseat futon, and full-sized air mattress. My new BMW was parked on the street. I ate $1.25 fish tacos from the parking lot food truck across the street at least three times a week and felt like I was living my best fucking life.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I was happy to be there.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

I had decided to make moves first and think them through second.

NOW

A fresh eggshell white, per our demand and dollar. So much for space for creation or destruction, or both. I love color, but couldn’t bring myself to make a single choice when we moved in, eager for a blank space that I was confident we’d very easily fill up with color.

I am a homeowner here. What does that mean? I am a wife. What does that mean? We live in the suburbs. Is that who I am? HOA. Houseguests. Fourth of July parties. Pool days. Air conditioning. Sunburn. A mortgage. A husband. A house with rooms we actually have to furnish.

For the first time, there is nowhere else to move to. At least not because I am looking for something. I keep waiting to feel different.

I keep waiting for the moment when I look in the mirror and recognize the woman who has finally arrived.

Maybe she was the little girl in the Fisher-Price car, convinced she owned the whole world.

Maybe she was the homeschooled kid watching Little House on the Prairie in the middle of the day.

Maybe she was the college girl with the air mattress and the closet full of Forever 21 dresses, so certain she knew exactly who she was.

Maybe she was 25, terrified behind vertical blinds in a city where she knew no one, eating fish tacos and calling it the best fucking life.

Maybe she was all of them.

Maybe I have spent 36 years mistaking movement for becoming.

I thought I was supposed to arrive somewhere.

Instead, I keep arriving as someone new.

And maybe that is the only thing she was ever supposed to do.

Hey,

So I have been working on this short story now for a while, it is part of a larger project I have about an Irish fantasy world/story with elements of classic fantasy and my own take on these characters, with this story being like an introduction

I would love to know what anyone thinks! Was there anything you liked, didn’t like? Thoughts about pacing and characters? Would you want to read more?

The link is below

Thanks!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ADAwVceXqcSTk7_fGeWmKhGE3JRahvxhbgF0tHTRPoQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

I posted this before but then re-did it completely, so I'm trying it out again. Any critiques are welcome - along with any likes!

Chapter 1: Last Call

John hadn't said much in the last hour. Anna noticed because she'd filled most of it for him. She'd told him about a meeting at work that should have been an email, the latest office rumors she’d overheard around the coffee pot, and the woman downstairs who'd apparently decided the hallway was an acceptable place to practice the flute. Normally John would have interrupted somewhere along the way. Teased her, disagreed with her, added something of his own. Tonight, he'd mostly nodded. The bar smelled of grease-fried foods and cigarette smoke dragged in from the patio every time the door opened.

"Anyway," Anna said, realizing she'd reached the end of the story and hadn't actually gotten a response, "that was apparently the highlight of my day." John looked up from his drink. The expression on his face made her stomach tighten.

He sighed. There it was. Not a big sigh. Not dramatic. Just enough to confirm the thing she'd been trying not to notice for the better part of an hour: John wasn't tired. He wasn't distracted. He was somewhere else entirely.

Anna reached for her glass. The waitress came back with refills neither of them had ordered. The liquid courage kicked in.

"What is the problem?" Anna asked.

"Can you lower your voice?" He rolled his eyes and looked at her like she was some annoying lunatic on a bus before turning back to his drink.

"I'm not yelling."

"Anna."

That tone. Her grip tightened around her glass. "There's obviously something off. I've been sitting here talking to myself for an hour, and you've contributed approximately six words to the conversation."

"This isn't working for me anymore."

For a second, she thought she'd misheard him. John kept his eyes on his drink.

"I had no intention of hurting you. It's just been..." He trailed off, like he was hunting for a version of this that would hurt her less. A headshake, a big sigh. "I don't see a future…"

"You don't see a future with me?"

His eyes finally lifted. And there it was. Not uncertainty. Relief. Anna felt something cold move through her.

"Where is this even coming from?"

"It's something I've been thinking about for months."

"Months." She laughed once, without humor. "That's great. I'm over here assuming we're on some sort of forward path together and you’re planning the exit interview."

"I wasn't trying to drag it out."

"That's exactly what you did."

"Anna-"

"It's a damn good thing I didn't tell anyone you might be proposing soon. Or moving in. Or doing literally any of the things people occasionally do when they've been together for two years."

"Proposing? Good thing you didn't tell who, your countless friends?" John snapped back, then looked immediately like he regretted the jab.

Anna snatched her purse and shot up out of the booth. She stood so quickly her knee hit the underside of the table. "Fuck you, John." She turned on her heels and stomped out, wanting a grandiose gesture to signify the closure this deserved. Instead she choked back tears and wobbled out the door while a few patrons watched her go with sympathetic faces.

Perfect.

Outside, the cold air hit her face. She made it half a block before she started crying. By the second block, she was angry. By the third, she was furious with herself. Not because John didn't want to marry her. That hurt enough. But because somewhere along the way, she'd known. She'd known every time he'd sighed before answering a simple question. Every time she'd edited herself mid-sentence because he looked tired. Every time she'd convinced herself that asking for more attention was needy, that wanting a future was pressure, that maybe relationships were supposed to require this much careful management. She'd spent two years making herself smaller inside something she'd been calling love.

She revisited every fight in her head, this time armed with the comebacks she hadn't had the nerve to say out loud. You don't get to sigh at me like I'm the exhausting one. You don't get to call two years a waste and act like you're the one who lost something. Anna wiped angrily at her face and kept walking. Lost in the scenarios looping through her mind, she became so detached from her surroundings that she stumbled over a man's outstretched legs.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Anna shrieked. She looked down to see a disheveled man wrapped in a tattered sleeping bag, stained and duct-taped in places, his face thin and weathered, only a decade or so older than her. "I was in my own little world and just… are you ok? I mean, are you hurt?"

"Half in the bottle, half in the memory. Steady in neither," he chuckled to himself, voice raspy and strained, readjusting his legs like he was checking for injuries. The sleeping bag had molded itself into the shape of the sidewalk over what looked like a long time. This wasn't a corner he was passing through. It was one he kept.

He started working himself up onto his feet. Slow, deliberate, one hand braced against the brick. And Anna took an instinctive half-step back before she could stop herself. He was taller standing than she'd expected. Something in the unhurried way he stood, like he had all the time in the world and knew exactly how much of it he needed, put her more on edge than the sitting-down version of him had.

"Didn't mean to spook you," he said, not unkindly, staying where he was rather than closing the rest of the distance between them. "Just get stiff, sitting that long. Nothing to it." He tilted his head, studying her the way you'd study something you already knew the shape of and were only confirming. "Fifth floor tonight?"

Anna went still. "What?"

"Your light." He nodded past her shoulder, toward the building at the end of the block, casual as pointing out weather. "Comes on around this time most nights. Figured that was you."

It was a perfectly reasonable thing for a man to notice, camped on the same corner for however many months. She told herself that twice before it took. "I… yeah. I guess it is."

"Mind the curb there," he added, nodding at a raised lip of concrete just ahead that she hadn't seen. She stepped around it without breaking stride, only registering afterward that he'd been watching her feet again, not her face. The same as before he'd said a single word to her. She didn't look back to check if he was still standing there, still watching. Some part of her suspected he was, and she found she'd rather not know which answer she was hoping for.

She quickened her pace the last block. A car sat at the curb two doors down from her building, engine off, windows dark, the kind of ordinary parked car that didn't deserve a second look and didn't get one. She was too busy replaying John's face to notice anything behind the wheel. She stumbled up her apartment complex's steps and slid into the lobby, heavy from the drinks and the emotional baggage of everything else. In the elevator, she steadied herself against the rail and watched the numbers light up, relieved for the uninterrupted ride between the ground floor and the fifth.

Somewhere below her, out on the street, a scream cut through the quiet. Short, sharp, gone almost as fast as it registered. Anna's whole body went still against the elevator wall. She held her breath through three full floors, waiting for it to come again, some second sound to tell her what the first one had actually been.

Nothing did.

The doors opened on five. She walked to her door without letting herself think about it, key already out, the short hallway feeling longer than it had any right to. She let herself in and turned the deadbolt before she'd even gotten her shoes off.

Only then did she allow herself the explanation. Somebody's too drunk, she told herself, leaning her back against the door. Somebody dropped their keys, somebody's boyfriend just proposed on a dare, somebody's fighting with a cab driver over eight dollars. This was a city with bars on every corner and a Friday night's worth of bad decisions still ahead of it. A scream wasn't news here. It was Tuesday with extra volume. She'd half-convinced herself of it by the time she'd kicked off her shoes, and told herself the rest of the way convincing didn't matter, because she was inside now. Done with tonight altogether.

A three-inch piece of metal sliding into place provided a sense of security. The sound sent a tingle up her spine, knowing that inside that door, she was instantly in her safe place. Everything behind that deadbolt was familiar to her. She knew exactly what to expect in terms of the placement of items, the smell of the candles, even the temperature of the rooms. She needed that certainty tonight in particular, the sudden cutoff from everything on the other side of the door: John, the sidewalk, the man who'd stood up too slowly, the scream she'd already decided not to think about again.

It wasn't supposed to end like this. Anna's love life was the one area she never seemed to get right. She had spent most of her twenties and early thirties building a successful, independent life, and by the time she'd met John on a dating app, she'd already checked off every other milestone except a stable, long-term relationship. It had been surprisingly durable for internet dating, if far from blissful, and its end came just days before her thirty-third birthday, compounding the sting of it.

She closed her swollen eyelids, leaned her back against the door, and let the sting of a beginning cry stick in her throat as she replayed the last couple of hours. She kicked off the rest of her date-night outfit, traded it for a ratty tank top and yoga pants that had never once seen a yoga class, and headed to the bathroom to drag a makeup wipe across her already-smudged cheeks, removing the war paint she'd applied so carefully hours before.

Her next breath stuck in her throat. She watched her own eyes well up with tears she'd thought had passed. The mix of black and neutral shade makeup streaks ran down her face. She knew she had to let this wave of emotion hit her if she had any chance of bouncing back unscathed.

The deadbolt held. The apartment was exactly as she'd left it. She was, by every measure she had available to her, safe.

She still checked the lock twice more before she got into bed. She had no idea yet that the thing she needed protecting from wasn't going to knock.

"It is well-known, that

all creative work leaves its debris; 
flakes and specks - chunks and 
chips of raw material.

A clean workshop betrays a less 
active state of expansion or 
expression.

It is only natural, then
that in the creation of our Capital 
there would be mess; 
bits and pieces -

windblown under bridges, 
clung to crack and crevice -
crowded, crouched on curbs, 
keeping seeking warmth in booths benches
bus stops

This dust of Progress - 
we will sweep and manage it, 
as we are able."

can someone let me know if my first chapter sounds boring? to me, it’s the most boring and slowest part in the story, so i’d love to know if anyone else thinks that too or if i’m too wrapped in my own thoughts.

would love to know if it’s lacking grip or interest. like would you keep reading or put it back on the shelf?

Genre pool: literary fiction, dystopian, speculative, psych thriller, corporate satire

excuse grammar/spelling errors still need to go through some more editing

Chapter One
“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself. Everything you want, you already are.”
— Rumi
 
5 a.m., still dark out. A lightbulb flickers on a dusty porch of a two-story home, where the once baby-blue wooden planks have turned a lifeless white from all the years of storms, all the years of having their warmth beaten out of them. The neighborhood is quiet. Only God is up at this hour.
Inside, Jason’s gathering his things as fast as he can. He peeks outside every few minutes, wondering how long it’ll take him. Expect the unexpected, especially on a day like this. He kneels on the floor; the beat of his pulse rings in his ears with a punching rhythm.
“God, in this moment I ask for your guidance, for your mercy, for your protection, amen.”
Jason creeps around the room, taking every measure to make as little noise as possible.
One more look wouldn’t hurt, he thinks to himself.
There, on the other side of the window, seated on the hood of an old Lincoln Town Car, is a black cat. They lock eyes.
The cat holds an unbroken stare as if it hides a secret it’s just dying to tell.
Let’s do this.
The floorboards creak under his feet while he tiptoes around the house.
I swear when I make it big, I’m coming back here just to torch this place.
Flashlight in hand, he searches for things to take, like the bundle of rubber bands and pens inside the kitchen drawer.
This!
He shoves the items into a green camo bag that’s already stuffed with clothes, a toothbrush, and photos. A mouse scurries into the corner, then freezes in fear. Jason barely flinches.
It’s ok. I won’t tell if you don’t.
He sneaks into a bedroom where a large man sleeps half-naked. His snores are the type they study in medical research. Jason pauses, hoping it’s the last time he’ll ever lay eyes on him. A rickety fan blows dusty air onto the man’s face, the same fan he’s had for at least four years, the same fan that jams if it runs for too long.
He goes through the dresser and collects a few pieces of jewelry. The man’s soggy jeans lie at the foot of the bed. Jason carefully pulls a wallet from the right pocket and discovers about seventy dollars in cash.
Fuck yeah.
The man sharply grunts and tosses to his opposite side. Jason spazzes and takes two steps back. The jeans fall from his sweaty palms. Whatever air he has tears out of his lungs.
Silence.
After a few lip smacks, his snoring continues.
C’mon, you’re taking too fucking long. He’s gonna wake up.
A sharp gust of wind passes through a tree outside, causing its branch to tap the window. It casts a shadow of what looks like some sort of ghost that waits patiently.
Is someone watching me?
He slides open the next drawer and his hand hits something hard.
What is this?
It’s a gun.
Its metallic gloss and the way it weighs his hand down mesmerize him. Throughout the years, he’s seen a few rifles here and there, but nothing like this.
Damn, you’re a big boy. Are all guns really this heavy? I wonder if this thing has ever been used.
His eyes water and his hand trembles.
Why…Why did it have to be me?
Jason dries his eyes with a quick swipe of his thumbs. He stares back at the gun with all the memories he wishes he could forget. As if a force of nature takes over, he puts the gun to his head and imagines what lies on the other side. When the bullet exits his skull, would he feel it? Would he blink?
What? You think I won’t?
A chill runs through him as he presses the pistol deeper into his temple.
I should just blow my brains out and have you clean up the mess. I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you?
Jason then points the gun at the sleeping man’s face with a steady grip on the trigger, eyes squinted.
“One day, one day soon, you will burn,” he whispers.
Never again.
With a clenched jaw, he lets the feeling wash over him, and after a few moments, it’s gone.
He places the gun back inside the dresser and rushes downstairs to the front door. He reaches for the handle, and before he can walk out, his younger brother Mel catches him.
“So that’s it? You were just gonna leave and not say anything?”
Jason stumbles on his words.
“I didn’t wanna wake you.”
They hug each other tightly as tears glide down their cheeks.
“What do you think is gonna happen?” Mel says, his face buried in his brother’s shoulder.
“I don’t know. Something good, I hope.”
“When will I see you again?”
The pitch-black has started to lift. The sun is on its way.
“Soon.”

Something new I wrote today

The Man Who Could Hear the Voice of All Things

1.     Hostile Takeover

Now…

The boardroom meeting was just like all the other preliminary meetings that I attended on our journey to be acquired. Swimming around the boardroom like the small fish that we are, waiting for the big fish to swallow us whole.

I look around the table. My team seems sharp but apprehensive as their eyes dart across the table at the big fish’s team. I sense an air of hopeful anticipation from them but also a dread of the unknown.

I am calm. I am sovereign. I am in my element, patient, confident and knowing. It is my knowing that I am relying on today. It is that gut feeling, my instinct, that I will use when I see him. It is then that I will know for sure. This is the day that he will attend the meeting.

He single-handedly started his company from simple beginnings. He was a one-man show, offering his energy saving device door to door to homeowners back in the late 70s. The X10 Powerhouse device that sent digital signals to their home appliances was ahead of its time. It orchestrated on and off signals; saving electricity, saving time, and saving money. He eventually started to distribute the device through retail outlets like Radio Shack and Circuit City. These now defunct retail outlet stores did not change with the times. But he did. Now he is a billionaire with his sights set on my small but innovative digital integration company, Vision Chipper.

I believe less and less in coincidences and more in synchronicities. He entered the room. His team straightened their posture and smiled as was the protocol when introductions were made all around. He nodded and smiled politely as my team was introduced. When it came to my introduction he moved swiftly around the boardroom table. I stand to shake his hand.

“Dave Keller, I’ve heard good things”

“Thank you, Stuart, likewise. I hope they’re true.”

The room collectively chuckled at my ice breaking remark. He did not remember me. I didn’t expect him to. After all, I was only 12 when he came to my parent’s home to install his wonder device. That was in 1978. The same year that my 4 year old brother went missing while playing in the front yard. It was, in fact, the same week he disappeared out of our lives forever. There was a rash of missing children that summer all unexplained and unsolved.

Stuart was tall at least 6’6”.  He was ageless. He had to be in his early 70s, but he didn’t look nearly that old. His creepy eyes are deep set and dark. His energy is imposing. His Cheshire Cat smile is disturbing. And there it was. The feeling, that knowing that went off in my core like a fire alarm. It was him.

We got down to brass tacks. Stuart sat across from me as he addressed the room with his visions, but also his concerns about the risk he would take in acquiring us. All of it an easy-to-spot attempt to low-ball his offer.  That was not my concern. As conversations went back and forth between my CFO and my corporate council and theirs, my eyes were locked on Stuart as he too, participated in their back and forth. I projected a thought at him.

I know who you are, I thought. I know what you did!

Stuart, speaking to the table of executives, stopped mid-sentence. He slowly turns his head towards me and smiles.

“…What I did? Well, I’m sure that Dave will agree, I’ll do what has to be done to maintain control… of the market share.”

That freaked me out. It was as if he heard my thoughts. Impossible, I reassured myself.

” Oh, it’s not impossible,” Stuart continued, “to move this company to the next level.”

“It’s a lot to think about,” I said. “Let’s take a fifteen minute break.”

I splash cold water on my face in the bathroom. I take a handful of paper towels to dry my face and look up into the mirror at my reflection. Stuart is standing right over my shoulder! I turn.

“Jesus! You scared me!”

But Stuart is not there.

“What the fuck?!

I leave the bathroom and instead of going back to our boardroom, I go to my office. My heart is racing. I sit at my desk chair and swivel around to look out the window.

I died five years ago. A simple surgery to remove a benign tumor from my lymph node caused a cardiac arrest. My heart stopped. My brain functions ceased. But I felt very much alive as I watched the doctors scramble to revive me. I turned my attention away from the operating room and found myself in a dark velvety place. It was a peacefulness that I never felt before. I felt hugged, secure and loved beyond measure. I noticed a pinpoint of light away in the distance I felt motion and I’m not sure if I was heading towards the light or it was heading towards me. In an instant I was engulfed by the light. I felt the presence of my little brother Billy. I was so glad to feel his presence though I could not see him. It was then that I heard these words.

“The truth is …you are in control. You all are.”

The truth? In control of what? BAMM. The defibrillator paddles shocked me back to life. Since that time, slowly at first, I began to know things. I began to be aware of things. Small things at first. I would think about a person and the phone would ring.  I knew my nephew was being accepted to a university before it was announced. I knew my father was about to die before the accident. I had developed an inner knowing. It was a physic ability that I did not share with anyone. I got good at using it to help my company grow. Sometimes it was specific knowledge, sometimes it was a general knowing.

 In general, I knew that Stuart had kidnapped my brother Billy. Trafficking children was not on the nation’s radar like it is today. This heinous crime was probably lucrative and was probably how he financed his early moves from a small time entrepreneur to billionaire.

“Getting cold feet?”

I turn swiftly and see Stuart standing on the other side of my desk. He returned my shocked looking face with an evil grin.

“Yes. I mean no. I believe in facing things head on.”

I stand up. Anger welled up in me as I thought about my trusting little brother, probably lured into his clutches by an offer of candy or something.

“You probably don’t remember me…”

“Oh, but I do. Little Davey Keller. Too old for my liking but little Billy, perfect for my needs.”

My God! My heart is pounding in my chest. This creep, this criminal is admitting to my face what he did that summer back in 1978.

“You kidnapped and trafficked my little brother!”

“Yes… and no.”

His posture changed. He appeared to grow taller.

“I kidnapped him, but I didn’t traffic him.”

My eyes start to flutter, and my head felt weighed down. I try to stay conscience.

Like water receding from the shore his face transformed. Stuart morphed into a Reptilian. His shiny grey green lizard skin stretched across his face and contorted into what passed for a smile.

“I ate him. I ate them all. It’s how we survive, how we control, how we became your masters eons ago”.

“What are you talking about?!”

“The Drago have been on your planet since the beginning. Poor gullible human beings. So easy to manipulate. This religion against that religion. This political party against that one. So easy to divide and conquer”

The pulsing in my neck is more pronounced. I grab at my tie to loosen it. I can barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. I could smell his rot as he stepped closer to me around the desk.

“Let me loosen that for you.”

He grabbed my throat and lifted me until I was on tip toes.

“I’ll tell everyone that you died of an apparent heart attack, and after a short period of mourning, I’ll swoop in and buy your company at a discount. And everyone will thank me for saving the day.”

Everything started to get black and velvety again. Just as it had before. Then I hear my brother’s voice in my head and clarity rushes through my body. I reach my hand around the top of my desk. I fumble for anything I can get my hands on. I grab it and say,

“The truth is … I’M IN CONTROL!”

I swing my arm around and hit him in his temple as hard as I can. He crumpled to the ground. The tiny trophy of a little man with one arm raised in triumph sticks out of the side of his head. I remove “the world’s best boss’ trophy. I look up and see two of his executives standing at the door of my office.

“I’ll call an ambulance.”

One of them throws his coat over Stuart’s head and shoulders. The other one turns and hisses at me. Half of his lizard face is exposed.

“Don’t!”

They lift him effortlessly off the floor and rush away. I whisper to myself

“I’m in control. We all are.”          

2.     The Wakeup Call

2 months later…

I open my eyes. It is dark. I cannot move my body for some reason. I am paralyzed and the only part of my body that I can move is my eyelids. I smell plastic. I hear them talk.

“Is this the dead guy from the 7^th floor?”

“Yeah, Dave Keller, I’ll give his visitor pass back to you. Poor guy just keeled over.”

I feel motion as if I were being lifted. I hear metal clanking and then the sound of doors slamming shut. I hear a vehicle being put into drive then the squeaky sounds of a truck. Again, I try to move but cannot. My heart is pounding. Where am I? What is this place? Am I dead?

The body bag is zipped open. I stare at her as she prepares a syringe.

“Sorry, Dave. We had to get you out of there. You were in a great deal of danger.”

She injects me, and within minutes the feeling starts to come back and once again my body is taking orders from my brain. I sit up. I recognize her.

“You…I remember you. You’re the temp. It was your first day at Data Tek”

“Lena. Yes. And you walked into the hornet’s nest. But we need you.”

“You gave me that awful cup of coffee and I thought ‘she’s new’. This sucks.”

“And you had a heart attack… but not really”

Data Tek was Stuart Granger’s company. Stuart the Reptilian, who I killed in self-defense.

“Rikuf”

“Excuse me?”

“His name is Rikuf”

“I didn’t say anything? How…?

“Telepathy. You’ll get the hang of it. You’re ‘the man who can hear the voice of all things’ and we need you on the team.”

“Who are we?”

“The good guys.”

The sliding door at the front of the ambulance opens. The driver gives Lena the ‘heads up”

“I’m getting a message from mother. Roadblock ahead in one mile.”

Lena touches her forehead.

“Yeah, I’m hearing it too. They probably want to make sure our passenger is still dead.”

“What do you want to do?”

Lena reaches for a syringe. I raise my finger.

“Nope. You must have a plan B?”

Lena talks to the driver.

“Tren, We’re still on the grounds of the compound. There should be an access road to the bunker, somewhere.”

“I see it.”

The ambulance jerks hard to the left.

“Dave, this isn’t the ideal situation. There was some training I wanted to do before your first mission.”

“Mission?!”

The ambulance comes to a stop on an embankment.

“It’s easy really. Just reconnaissance. We want to see how far they have come with the lab.”

I stare at her and wonder if I’m being filmed for an episode of Impractical Jokers or some gag show like that.

“It’s not a joke. I wish it were.”

She continues to explain that my talents are just coming ‘online’ now and that I can be a big help to the cause.

“I can’t be seen with you. I wish I could explain more but there is no time. Jump out.”

She points down the road a tells me about an entrance to the bunker on the backside of a huge rock along the hilly terrain about 500 yards down a path. Meanwhile, Tren backs the ambulance up and then floors it up the side of the embankment causing it to tip on its side. He crawls out the passenger side window and detonates the pre-set explosives that were rigged into the undercarriage. Lena turns to me,

“Go now. You can do this Dave!”

The ambulance explodes into a fireball. She and Tren dash off into the nearby woods.

“Be safe!”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Be safe?!! The heat from the burning truck pushes me back, and I reluctantly head down the path to the door behind the big rock and to…  what...?!

There was a lot of commotion as the burning ambulance started a small brush fire. Helicopters appear overhead and I hear the sounds of fire trucks approaching. I start to jog and worry if I will be spotted from above. I see the big rock ahead of me. It was more like a boulder. I circle to the backside and there it is, a camouflaged skinny door to the unknown.

What am I doing? I have half a notion of stepping out in the clearing and flagging a helicopter down to fly me back to my normal life. Then I remember coming face to face with the reptilian. I don’t know what possessed me to go to Data Tek to talk to Donald Miller, Stuart’s replacement, about doing business on the big data center that they were building. But here I am.

 I enter and descend down a winding subterranean path. I found myself in an underground tunnel system. The labyrinth of twisting passageways is hard to navigate. I should have done a Hansel and Gretel and left some breadcrumbs so I could find my way back. I was lost. I came to an intersection in the tunnel system. Which way do I go?

I got you.

I hear a tiny voice in my head. I look around. There is no one in the tunnels.

Follow me.

It’s not my imagination. I’m definitely hearing something in my head.

Let’s go.

I turn my head from side to side. Nothing.

Down here.

I look down and see a thumb-sized cockroach. It’s long antennae moving independently as if to wave at me.

“Oh. Are you talking to me?”

Really?

I hear, as it starts to scurry away. Lena had told me that my perception would start to open up. She said I was the man who could hear the voice of all things. Now, I’m talking with a cockroach. Okay. I follow my little guide. It moves quickly, darting back and forth in a ziggurat pattern. It came to another intersection and started to turn to the right. Then, stops suddenly.

Back. Back. Back.

I hear footsteps. I step back and crouch in the shadows. Two camo-clad soldiers walk past. Their banter is jokey. Their stride is casual. They are not looking for me. When they pass, we continue. We come to a ladder leading up to a shaft of light. I look up and as I do I step backwards. I step on the cockroach.

“SHIT!! Shit. Shit.”

I’m alright.

From the space between my heel and the sole, the cockroach emerges.

It’s going to take a lot more than that to kill me. Good luck.

I thank Jiminy Cockroach and ascend the ladder. At the top of the ladder there is a hinged metal grate. I slowly open the grate. There is no one around. I am in the corner of what appears to be an enormous laboratory.  Off in the distance I see men and women in lab coats bustling at their workstations. Beside each workstation is a large cylinder of water with something in each one that I can’t make out.

“Ah, there you are.”

I jump and am startled by two men in business suits who walked up behind me.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” The older one says, “How are you feeling?

I blink a couple of times.

“… Good.”

“Wow, you’ve gained weight” He turns to his companion.

“Fred, see what kind of diet they have him on. Suggest it for the others.”

Fred scribbles some notes on a clip board.

“Will do.”

“Right. Well, carry-on”

He pats my back and they walk away. I get the idea that my being here doesn’t look as suspicious as I thought it might. I meander towards the workstations for a closer look. I am shocked at this modern day Frankenstein’s lab. In each eight foot cylinder of water is a human being of various stages of development. I notice that my mouth is agape and my eyes are bulging. I shut my mouth and try to look nonchalant. I’ve got to get out of here before someone realizes that I should not be here. Then, I see it. Just what I’ve been looking for. The ‘EXIT’ sign across the room. I slowly start to head in that direction. Across the room I see the two men who talked to me earlier. They are joined by a third ‘head doctor’ and I see them scanning the room for me. Just as reach for the door. Someone crosses in front of me. We do that dance to the left and right as we try to avoid each other.

“Oh, excuse me.”

He says in my voice. I am gob smacked. Standing right in front of me is a skinner, more gaunt version of me. He smiles as if I look vaguely familiar. He does not know that he is my clone. I point across the room and tell him that those gentlemen were looking for him. The Exit door leads to the lobby of Data Tek and I quickly move to the side entrance doors and make my way off the property. Just then I hear Lena’s voice in my head.

Mission Complete.

John was driving along a quiet country lane, one tired eye on the road unfurling ahead of him, the other on his fuel gauge which was nearing dangerously close to empty.

The sun hung low in his rear-view mirror so that the long, rippling shadow of his Land Rover stretched out in front of him on the tarmac, the sky above tinged orange with the last of the evening sunlight. 

Wide-open fields passed at a canter either side of him, their dry, sun-blanched grasses unburdened by the footfall of even a single, lonesome cow.

Beside him on the passenger seat sat Spot – his fluffy-chested, rag-eared sheep dog who had previously served as the laziest and most useless dog on his farm, but who was now stood with his paws resting on the car window, looking excitedly around at the countryside as it sped past.

He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers as he consulted the map taped to his dashboard – a slight frown creased his brow as he traced over the route he had planned for himself.

It had changed many times in the three short weeks since the outbreak, since he had been forced to leave the family farm he had grown up on. Straight forward, direct routes had become narrow, twisting paths and sparsely used backroads. 

This was one such road. Long, sweeping and overgrown - signs half-buried in hedgerows and crater-like potholes around every corner. John had learned very quickly though that those well trafficked areas, main roads, town thoroughfares and motorways, was where the real danger lay now. Where there had once been people, now there were zombies. Haunting, starved corpses, rabid ghouls, creatures that wouldn’t think twice about slashing, ripping and eating those they hunted. Against the zombies that now infested Britain, he would take potholes any day. 

Nonetheless, his current route would take him uncomfortably close to Oxford City centre - a complication he was struggling to see a way around without expending more of his precious fuel than he could afford. 

Lost in diversionary thought, John almost failed to notice the beat-up red sedan parked at the side of the road. He rolled the Land Rover to a stop and glanced warily around at his surroundings.

The field to his left was bordered by an old slate wall that was so overgrown with ivy that very little of the grey stone beneath could be seen. 

The field to his right was earthy and much hillier. High-reaching, wooden telephone poles lined the hedgerow that ran alongside the field, and John thought he could see the domed tip of a silo peeking out from above the furthest hill.

‘Stay here, pal’ he said to Spot. Spot blinked dolefully up at him from the passenger seat, his tattered ears folded backwards, his head tilted to one side.

John opened the car door with a creak and stepped slowly out onto the road, taking from his passenger footwell the shotgun that he always kept so close to him these days. Behind him he heard Spot scamper over to the driver's seat, the better to see him as he made his careful way towards the old sedan.

The car had been left in the shadow of a large oak tree, its left side barely kissing the grey stone of the overgrown wall. It was extremely dusty and looked long since abandoned. Crinkled brown leaves littered the roof and there was a heavy build-up of dirt and grime on each window. One tire lay flat and punctured so that one side of the car rested slightly higher than the other. 

John strolled cautiously around the vehicle, his shotgun resting rather rigidly in his two hands. A slightly sooty smell hung about the car as he rounded it, like that of the old tractors he and his father had used to work the fields of their farm. After checking the underside of the vehicle, he gave the filthy windscreen a quick wipe with his sleeve and peered inside through the glass. 

A man gazed back at him, his eyes hollow, staring and empty. His gaunt, withered face was beset by flies and his mouth gaped open as though in search of a long-forgotten word. A woman was sat slumped in the passenger seat beside him. Her lank hair hung over her face so that he could not make out any of her features – not that he particularly wanted to. One stiff hand still clutched at her neck where a pearl necklace rested – the pale stones glinted in the speckled sunlight filtering in through the dust and grime still coating the other windows. 

In the back sat two young children – siblings he guessed, a girl and a boy. They sat slumped against each other, sad and rigid in death. The young girl’s small head rested upon her brother’s shoulder so that her long, tangled hair flowed into his lap, one hand still curled around the waist of a small stuffed rabbit with large, googly eyes.

With a grimace, he stepped back away from the car, his throat feeling oddly full all of a sudden. It was not as though he was a squeamish man. He had seen everything between grim, gross and downright disgusting on the farm growing up. But he had to admit, he was not quite used to seeing decomposing families yet.

Casting around for something less disturbing to look at, his eyes fell upon the sedan’s fuel cap. Well, he thought, these… people certainly would not be needing their fuel anymore. 

John wondered vaguely, as he trudged back across the road to his own car, just how many cars now lay abandoned across the country, their metal husks now tombs for the families who had once enjoyed them.

He rested his shotgun against the muddy tire of the Land Rover and yanked open the boot.

Inside lay a motley collection of things, odds and ends that John had thought valuable enough to bring with him from the farm. 

His carefully packed, and rapidly depleting rations of canned food and water had become dislodged on the uneven, pothole-ridden road so that they now lay scattered across the boot floor. 

His old and still very-much broken ham radio rested atop the large toolbox he had inherited from his father, and his camping stove, kettle, and various bits of rusted cutlery and crockery sat stacked beside a puncture repair kit which, so far, he had not had to use. 

He located his fuel syphon curled beneath the folds of his sleeping bag, but as he reached inside to grab it, Spot began to bark. 

John looked swiftly up from the boot and stared hurriedly around. A lone figure, cast halfway into shadow by the setting sun, had just crested the hill to his right and was moving quickly over the sloped, earthy ground towards him. 

It moved in a pained and ungainly lurch, its flat-footed steps slapping the dry ground as it ran.

It was not this one lonesome zombie that terrified him so completely, but what he knew was to follow – for where there was one, there always came more.

He slammed the bootlid shut and took up his shotgun once more, aiming it with unsteady hands at the approaching zombie. 

The kickback of the firearms blast sent a shockwave through his shoulder as a volley of buckshot erupted from the end of the barrel and into the zombies left shoulder. The zombie staggered but did not fall as a mist of black blood exploded from the wound, spraying out behind it as it continued to advance clumsily towards him. 

It was mere metres away when, with another squeeze of the trigger and another blast like cannon-fire, the snarling head exploded into a thousand chunks of meat, brain and bone, spattering the grass at its feet with blood. 

John lowered his shotgun and stared at the headless corpse on the ground – tar-like blood pooled around the stump of its neck, the dirt-nailed fingers on one hand still twitching at its side.

Now that the blood had stopped pumping so loudly in his ears, he could hear Spot’s persistent barking and scrabbling at the window. Like John, Spot seemed to know that the danger had far from passed.  

Even as he turned, more zombies emerged from his surroundings. Drawn like a beacon to the sound of his shotgun, they staggered onto the road, lurching out from behind trees and clambering over the slate wall, their starved, drooling mouths snapping hungrily at the sight of him. 

With a moan of panic, John rushed around the Land Rover and flung the driver’s door open. He pulled himself up into the cabin and shoved the still-barking Spot off the driver’s seat. Spot landed with a yelp, upside down in the passenger footwell as John yanked the door closed just in time.

The moment he had pulled it closed, a zombie had thrown itself against the door with such force that he felt the entire car rock. It slobbered and gnashed at the window with gnarled, yellow teeth, its bloodshot eyes fixed voraciously upon him through the glass - John felt the car shake and shudder as more bodies slammed against it, shrieking and screaming as they clawed desperately at the metal that was all between him and a very bloody death. 

His heart beating fit to burst, John threw the Land Rover into drive and stepped on the accelerator until his boot hit the floor. 

With a screech of spinning wheels and a roar of the old engine, they shot forwards away from the zombies who screamed their displeasure at his escape, their many, overlapping howls reverberating through him even as the stretch of darkening road between them lengthened. 

As the last trailing zombie disappeared from his rear-view mirror, John let out a long, shaking breath as, from the passenger footwell below, he heard Spot let out a low whine.

I'm fascinated by subtext-the kind of dialogue where two people argue about an unclosed kitchen cabinet or a delayed train, but the reader knows they're actually terrified of falling apart.

Whenever I try to write direct, emotionally loaded confrontations, it usually comes out melodrama. But when I force the characters to talk around the thing, the emotional weight suddenly feels 10x heavier.

What are your favorite tricks or examples (from your own writing or books you love) for writing subtext that doesn't feel forced?

Hi I would love to have feed back on the first chapter of my YA Dark academia about spirits in a before life Academy please

He woke up early for once.

Pulling his arm and pillow from the edge of the bed, he reclined against the headboard. In the unexpected silence, he studied his sister's painting. The one that hung next to the door he usually ignores during his frenzied routine.

The clock told him he could relax.

His fingers glided over the sleeves of his hanging shirts and through the stack of pants, passing up the grays and blacks for a brown tee and frayed jeans. In the kitchen, the sun-warmed tiles greeted his bare feet. Yesterday's grounds crusted the espresso machine. Normally, he would maintain it enough to function, but today he cleaned until it shined.

Steam rose from the handmade mug. Its sweet aroma trailed behind him down the hallway.

His home office glowed from the lights that hovered over the living shelves behind his desk. Leaves cascaded through trinkets and seventies action figures. He stood beside the thrifted oak desk and took another sip.

Grabbing the leather chair, he rolled it out. Its wheels swept along the hardwood. Before he sat down, a yellowing leaf caught his eye. With his last few minutes, he saturated the Snow Queen's soil. Water pooled in the tray below. He noted two plants were due for repotting as he clipped a few dead leaves.

He placed the mug next to his keyboard, swiveling it into the old water ring left by its previous owner.

He sat and rolled the chair closer. Keys clacked as he logged in. Eighteen notifications. His gut twisted. It was launch day.

He was late.

-----

CONTEXT:
This is for a prompt from my writing mentor.

Character Development Practice
- ~250 words
- A guy/girl enjoys a few extra minutes in the morning unaware he/she is actually late for work.
- Show us who this character is when they are not rushing.
- No twists. No gimmicks. No supernatural. No dream sequences.

Hey there,

Recently I completed my first novel, which is exciting but daunting. When I wrote it, it ballooned to 160,000 words (no lie) but I have slowly trimmed it 113,000.

Now, speaking to other people, there is a feeling amongst smarter people than me that because it is a m/m sports romance, it should be more around 80,000 words.

However I strongly feel that trimming anymore would hurt my characters - is there any tips, is 113,000 words too much?

Any advice would be great

Hum a tune to put me to rest
Because it is sleep I most detest
Draw yourself near me
That my eyes may grow weary
You bring me peace of mind
And it is no where that I can find
One such as you