Critique: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1ul01ez/comment/ovg5gjj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The Chocolate Cake (First half of a Short Story**)**

He looked in the mirror at the wispy remains of a once head full of hair. His face was blubbery and plagued with wrinkles though there were still some remnants of handsome features: high cheekbones, olive skin, and piercing blue eyes to name a few. After a decade of drinking, snorting, and smoking anything he could get his hands on, those features reeked of wasted potential. “Oh my god, look what happened to you! Where did my boy go? Where did he go!?” he still heard his mother’s shrieking voice lingering in his head after avoiding his entire family for years on end. He was 38, though looked s decade older, and had moved back into his mother’s house after getting sober. Flipping open the notes app on his phone, he saw that it’s been another day of sobriety. Day 246. Day 247. 

He laid down on his bed with emotions bubbling up. “No job, no money, no women, no prospects,” he thought of George Costanza, and it made him chuckle. “I fucked it all up, didn’t I? I had a good life, and I couldn’t appreciate it. How long will it take for me to get back on my feet? Damnit I’ll probably be in my 40s when that happens. I wish I was someone else, anyone else!” For the first time in a long time, he got on his knees by his bed, folded his hands into prayer, and wept. 

“Johnny what’s going on in there?” his mother’s shrill voice came from outside the bedroom. 

“Nothing ma,” he said, wiping his tears.

“Johnny, I need you to go to the store to get the birthday cake for Emma. I’m busy right now preparing all the food.” Emma was his little sister who had just graduated college. He remembered the excitement she would have when introducing him to her friends; he wondered if she would be embarrassed of him now.  Johnny opened the door to his mother who looked at his red eyes. “You know where Rosemary’s bakery is right? You gotta pick up the order for Marcia. MARCIA.” She said enunciating her name.

“Ma, I know your name. Can I take your car,” he replied sulking towards where they kept the car keys.

“What’s wrong with your car!” He cringed from his mother’s thin, loud voice.

“ACs broken.”

“God, ACs broken. ACs broken! There’s always something with you. Fine, fine take it. And take this cash as well.” She said exasperated while handing him a few 20s.  

“She always gets herself into a sweat over the smallest things,” he thought. He remembered how loathsome the house was for three months when she found a joint inside his pillowcase in high school. “Thanks ma.” He yelled out grabbing the keys to the Acura. Although it was only a few minutes away, he took his time driving around with no destination in mind. He passed old schools, the pizza place him and his friends would hang out at after class, and the park he had his first kiss at. The feeling of Georgia’s braces colliding with his front teeth came back to him*. Wow Johnny, kithing you is so exithing!*

Realizing Rosemary’s Bakery was just up ahead, he pulled into the parking lot and stepped outside all labored. He pulled out an American Spirit and lit up. The smoke filled his lungs like a warm companion and his mind softened. Taking a final drag, he tossed the butt, walked into the bakery and his jaw fell straight through the floor. Standing inside was a gorgeous woman with long red hair and green eyes. She was the kind of girl teenage boys would have a poster of on their bedroom walls. “What is she doing in a town like this?” Johnny thought. Next to her was a man. Late 30s, trim, and good looking but not as striking as her. The man slipped his hand behind her waist and Johnny felt a pang of jealousy. 

“So, Mark and Laura, correct? Juliana, could you bring the order for Mark and Laura Neison?”  the old woman said while reading the names off a spiral notebook. A few moments later Juliana returned from the kitchen with a decadent three-layer chocolate cake that made Johnny’s mouth water.

“Yes, here it is. Let me just get a cover for this,” Juliana said putting the cake down on the countertop. “Well, here you are, enjoy!” Juliana said as Mark picked up the cake and Laura watched cautiously.

“Thank you so much we really hope you both enjoy it. And you both just make a lovely couple by the way!” the old woman said with her palms pressed together smiling. The couple thanked them and walked out. Johnny glanced back at them exiting then walked to the front to the old woman. “Bea” he read off her nameplate. 

“Hey, uh I have an order for Marcia. Spelt M-A-“ 

“Marcia, yes sir we have that,” she said squinting at her notebook. “Chocolate cake, right? Juliana can yo-“ she started before Juliana walked out of the kitchen with a plain old chocolate cake. 

“And it says, ‘Happy Birthday Emma’ on there, right?” he asked.

“Yes, dear here it is,” Bea said taking off the cover and showing it to him. Johnny paid up and left to the car, carefully placing the chocolate cake in the passenger seat. He drove directly home this time and went back inside to his mother’s. 

“Johnny? Where were you? You were gone for like an hour.” She yelled from the kitchen. Johnny kicked off his shoes onto the shoe rack and walked into the kitchen. 

“There was a long line. Where do I put this.” He said holding the cake.

“In the fridge. Come taste this,” she said holding up a forkful of Mac N Cheese. 

“Ma I’m alright. I’m on a diet.” It was true. Though he fell off the wagon a few times, he had been watching what he ate far more than usual.

“One bite won’t kill you!” she said forcing the fork in his mouth. 

“It’s good,” Johnny said with a mouthful of food. “I’m going to go laydown for some time.”

“Okay, well you only have about an hour before Emma and everyone else start coming here.”

“Everyone else? Who else is coming?” he asked with a wince. 

“Oh, just Uncle Francis, Aunt Sylvie, and your father. It’s a family thing today. Emma’s friends are throwing her a big birthday party this weekend. They called me earlier to ask for some baby pictures of her. They must be making her some sort of gift. Why don’t your friends ever do anything nice for you like that? Oh, why do I even ask and trouble myself with that. Okay go lay down; I’ll wake you up.”

Johnny went back to his room and laid down. Images of the red-headed women came through his mind which he tried to push away but couldn’t. He remembered her rosy cheeks and taut body; his heartbeat quickened. “Fuck,” he thought, getting up and going to the restroom. Seated on the toiled, he slipped down his pants and entered a porn site on his phone. “Redhead” he typed in the search bar. He clicked on the first video and slowly began to masturbate. After a few minutes he came and felt pangs of shame run down his spine. After washing up, he went back to his room and finally fell asleep. 

Knock knock knock. He awoke to what he thought was his mother knocking on the door. When he opened the door though, to his surprise, he saw his sister Emma wearing a pitiful smile. The last time he had seen her had been months ago when he first moved back in. “Emma,” he said giving her hug.

“Hey, Johnny, how you been,” she said still resting her hand on his shoulder.

“As good as I can be I guess,” he said nervously laughing. She didn’t reply but gave him a soft smile mixed with reassurance and melancholy. “Oh, I’m stupid, happy birthday Emma. Ma told me your having some big celebration this weekend?”

“Oh, I don’t know I think my friends just wanted to do a little get together that’s all,” she said looking downcast. “Well only Dad and Uncle Francis are here.” They both walked to the living room to meet them. 

“Hey Dad. Uncle Francis,” Johnny said nodding at them. His father stood silent and lost in thought as usual with his arms behind his back. He gave a look of restrained disgust at Johnny before slowly pacing around the living room with his eyes downcast. Johnny clenched his jaw watching his father mope around. “Guys such a weasel. Has he ever given me anything other than disapproval all my life?”

“Hey, Johnny, how you been buddy,” Uncle Francis giving him a playful smack on the shoulder.  Johnny shook away the annoyance he felt from his father and gave his uncle a smile. 

“Eh I’m doing alright Uncle Francis. Where’s Aunt Sylvie?”

“Oh, she’ll be here soon. You ain’t giving your ma too much trouble, are ya?” he chortled. Johnny laughed it off while Emma rolled her eyes slightly. “Marcia how’s the kid been? Extra cooking and cleaning, eh? I know how hard you’re always working in here. You know every time we leave here, Sylvie can’t believe how clean this place is. She says that every time.”

“Oh, well thank you Francis. He’s been good. And he’s not a kid anymore, he can take care of himself.” Marcia said while cleaning up the table with a wipe. Johnny face slowly started going red, but he attempted to stay composed by silently walking off to the dining room and sitting on one of the chairs. A few moments later though, he heard footsteps and his uncle appeared. 

“Hey buddy,” he said with a shushed tone. “Your mother was telling me that it’s been hard with the market lately to get a job and all. You know I totally get that kid. 5-6 years ago, I had a tough time finding a job myself. Listen I know a few people that can get your name in the door. Maybe not great pay but something to just help you get back on your feet you know?” Uncle Francis said with his arm on Johnny’s shoulder. 

“I appreciate the help Uncle Francis. S-sure I’ll think about it and send you a text,” he said. 

“Sure, sure take your time. No pressure, you’re not obligated. You’re a smart kid you’ll be okay, don’t worry about it. Alright now cheer up it’s your sister’s birthday and she wants her big brother to be happy for her. So eh eh ahhh” Uncle Francis said tickling Johnny a little. Johnny laughed at his uncle’s benefit as the door rang which could only be his Aunt Sylvie. 

“Hello,” his aunt said in her exaggerated accent. “Johnny how are you?” she said seeing him and his uncle together.

“Good Aunt Sylvie, how are you?”

“Good, good. Oh, Emma darling! Happy birthday!” she said singing and hugging Emma.

“Oh, thank you Aunt Sylvie.” Emma said uncomfortably laughing.  

“Baby, you look so beautiful. So, does she have a boyfriend, Marcia? I bet all the boys in college are interested.” Aunt Sylvie said planting kisses on both her cheeks. 

“Oh, she doesn’t tell me anything,” Marcia said laughing while setting the table with dinner. 

“Marcia let me help you with that. You’re always so busy in the kitchen.” Said Aunt Sylvie.

“I was just saying that!” said Uncle Francis.

“So, Emma do you have a boyfriend or still shopping around? No harm in taking your time honey. Don’t want to make a bad choice, a lot of men out there are bad choices you know.”

“She’s warning you cause she made a bad choice with me eh?” Uncle Francis laughed. 

“Oh stop it,” Aunt Sylvie said playfully slapping her husband on the shoulder. 

“Uhm, I don’t know there’s a guy I guess,” Emma said.

“A guy! Well, when all these boys are gone, I want you to tell me all about him. Oh, my baby’s all grown up now,” Aunt Sylvie said going in for more kisses. 

“Okay everyone, let’s do cake first okay. Johnny, can you get the cake out and knife?” Marcia said clapping to garner attention. 

“Where’s the knife?” Johnny asked his mother. 

“God, just get the cake, I’ll get it” his mother said slightly irritated. His mother set up the cake and put numbered candles on it. 

“23 years old. All her life ahead of her,” Johnny thought. He saw his mother murmuring for a lighter, so he pulled his out from his back pocket and lit the candles up. “Shit now they know I carry a lighter on me,” he thought. Despite his worries no one mentioned anything, and Emma stood in front of the cake. 

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU,” they sang off key. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR EMMA. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!”

The song ended and Aunt Sylvie yelled out, “Make a wish Emma!” Emma glanced at her brother, closed her eyes for what seemed like ages, then blew out the candles. PHOO!

Hey, looking for feedback on this cyberpunk story I've started writing, I don't have a lot of experience so would like to get an idea of the kind of level I'm currently at.

Specifically I would appreciate feedback primarily in these areas:

Dialogue- does my dialogue flow well, does it feel natural (in a cyberpunk world)

Characters- Specifically Angelo, and to some extent Kiara, do you get a strong sense of who they are?

Action- Lower priority, but it would be good to know if the action sequence was at least easy enough to follow, or if there are areas I could improve.

Finally, there may be one or two areas where I've wrote notes to myself in brackets, please ignore those.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRUlFKa8096v0eDWtmp6Psfbsfw6Ihyo44bfvdipqDiTS0WciDEdFKufZiq_mu6qBjSkbnd84U01fe_/pub

Critiques:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1ukn961/comment/ovc2wxy/?context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1ukr2im/comment/ovb403g/?context=3

This is the prologue to an epic fantasy saga. I am looking for general feedback.

My primary goal for this piece is to establish a sense of "atmospheric weight". I want the environment, specifically the high desert, to feel as oppressive, ancient, and alive as the characters themselves.

PROLOGUE:

*What the fire takes, the water keeps.*

- the third line of the oldest prayer; the fourth is struck from every stone, and no living mouth recalls it

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

The cold came up out of the ground.

That was the first thing the high desert had taught Maruk to mistrust. In the towns cold fell, down off the night sky as rain came down, or judgment, from somewhere above a man. Here it rose. It seeped up through the soles of his boots out of black rock, and a man who lay down to sleep thinking the danger was in the air over his head would wake in the grey hour with the chill already inside him, in his knees and his spine and the deep meat of him, and would not wake warm again. Maruk knew that.

He crouched now with one knee in that cold and his fingers spread above a track in the sand, and he did not touch it.

It was a hand. He had spent more of his life reading ground than reading his own skin, and the ground was telling him a thing he had no wish to hear. A handprint, pressed deep beside the mark of a bare foot, and the wrist had set wrong, canted forward, the heel of the palm worn hard and smooth as a hoof from going where a hand was never meant to go, which is along the ground. There were more of them ahead, a dozen, a score, hand and foot and hand and foot, all fresh, the night wind not yet come to soften the edges, all crawling the one direction. Inward. Toward the blank place the maps left empty at the center of everything.

The maps named the black rim around that blankness the Lion Mountains, and there were no lions, and it was not a mountain. It was a ring, a low broken wall of black ridge laid in a circle scores of miles across, and it lay so flat on the floor of the world that a man crossing the outer flats saw only weathered stone and thought himself nowhere in particular. You did not see the thing for what it was. You only felt the roads bend quietly away from it under your feet, season on season, no matter where you started, as Maruk's own road had bent, until every path he walked came at last to this blank ring that nothing crossed.

"We should turn back."

Maruk did not answer. The boy had said it perhaps thirty times since the rim first came up on the edge of the world two days gone and then refused to come closer, far things behave so in the deep sand, hanging at the limit of sight while a man's water dwindled and his nerve dwindled faster. Beko was a good boy and had been a good guide for the easy half of the road, when the way ran well to well; nineteen, narrow and quick, with the long bones of the river people and an open friendly face the desert had not yet finished teaching. Maruk had hired him out of the last green town for a guide and a witness and, in the small hours, for the plain animal comfort of not dying alone, and he was sorry for all three now. There are places a man has no right to bring a boy with his whole life still in front of him.

Behind them the she-camel made a low sound in her chest, and that he marked, because the camel was worth more than his own courage. He had ridden her eleven years and heard her make that sound twice, and both times there had been death inside the hour. Her head was up, her nostrils wide, her eyes rolling white at the dark. She did not spit and did not complain. She was afraid.

The boy had stopped saying it. For two days Beko had filled the dark with *we should turn back*, thirty times and more, the way a man keeps his own voice for company on a bad road; and somewhere in the last hour the saying had dried in him, and now he sat the camel's off side and made no sound at all. Maruk marked it as he marked the camel, and did not turn, because there was nothing in his own face he could have shown the boy that would have served him.

Then the wind shifted off the rim and brought the smell, and Maruk knew the camel's fear for his own.

It was an animal reek, the close rank warmth of a living thing that has bedded a long time in its own filth, and it had no business here, in a dead cold place the dry should have scoured clean an age ago. He had it downwind a hundred paces before he had the shape: a low pale hummock in the lee of a ridge that he took, coming up on it slow, for a sand-coloured beast gone down to die, some goat lost off a caravan, carrion he would not touch but had to read. He came over it with the knife out of long habit.

It lifted its face. It was a woman.

Or it had been. She was naked, weathered the grey-brown of the country itself, worn so far into it that a man might step over her in daylight and call her a stone; and she had gone on her hands so long that the wrists had set forward and the shoulders had come up around a sunk head, and there was a beetle moving at her cheek and she did not mind it. She looked up at him out of that ruin, and there was a light in her eyes, far back, behind some shutter that had closed a long time ago, and for half a breath the light came up toward the front of her, toward him, toward the fact of a person standing over her in the dark, and tried to be a woman looking at a man. And could not find the road. It reached the shut place and stood there; and then it sank back to wherever it lived now, and she put her face down again to the dead shrub and the beetle.

He had seen the grey people in the towns lift a worn man's grief off him with one swallow of something sweet, and leave him smiling and light, and had taken that for the whole of it. He knew now it was only the near edge. Here was the far edge, crouched in the dirt with a beetle at its lip, the same kindness given not once but without end, that does not lift the self out clean but wears it away a grain at a time, the high things first; the words, the shame, the standing up, the keeping of the dead, the knowing of one's own name, and leaves the rest to go on its hands, with a light behind the shutter that can no longer reach the glass.

There was nothing to be done. The road back had grown shut in her years before tonight; he read it in the set of the wrists as he read everything. He crouched, against the knowing. He spoke to her. Not soft, as you gentle a frightened beast. Plain, as you say a thing to a person who is owed the saying. He told her the night was cold and the wind off the rim was bad and she should keep to the lee of the ridge. He told her his name. He asked her, getting no answer and expecting none, whether she had been anyone's once, and whose. He spoke on the one chance in ten thousand that some last filament behind the shutter felt it land, the way a hand laid on a sleeper is felt down in a dream.

"I see you," he said, last of all, and meant it, and rose, because there was no more of it in him to give.

The boy had not come down. Maruk had heard him try, a scrape on the loose stone, a half-step, and then nothing, held where he stood at the camel's head. Maruk did not call him down. There are things a man does not make a boy come closer to, and he had brought the boy close enough to too many already.

And the dark gave up the rest of them. They were all around him, he saw now; scattered wide across the outer flats in ones and never twos, a reach of dark between each and the next: a slow field of the gone, sunk into the lee of every ridge, drifted up against this outermost ring as sand drifts to the slack edge of a dune, while somewhere past them, ring on ring, the dark went down toward whatever the maps left empty at the center of everything.

That was when the bell began.

It came from under the earth. Maruk could not have said how he knew, except that the sound did not rise off the rim as sound is meant to; it came up, through the cold dead stone and into his ribs and his teeth, faint and round and impossibly deep, as if the whole floor of the world were a hollow thing brimful of black water and somewhere fathoms down a hand had reached out and struck a great bronze bell once, and then, after a silence just long enough to hope it was the only one, struck it again, lower, and a third time lower still; three slow strokes and a fold at the end, spaced like the words of a man speaking very slowly to someone very far off, someone he is not sure can hear.

And out on the flats, among the worn, one shape stood up that was not worn. It came erect and unhurried out of the dark at the foot of the rim, tall, wrapped head to foot in white that took the low moon and gave it gently back, and it bore a lantern that did not flicker or lean or stream as a flame leans in a night wind but burned level and patient and wrong; and it moved out among the fallen the way a man moves down rows he has tended a long time, bending to none of them, only passing. A keeper. A thing that walked upright in the one place on the earth that had taken the upright out of everyone else.

It stopped, and turned its head, and looked up the dark slope, across the flats, across the hundreds of paces of broken stone and thin black air, to the cleft where two men lay screened in rock, hidden as well as the desert had ever taught Maruk to hide a thing. There was no power on the earth by which it could have seen them. It looked at them anyway, with no surprise in it and no alarm, only a mild and level regard, the notice a man gives a sparrow come into his yard. And the old certainty went through Maruk cold and entire as a blade laid flat along the spine.

At Maruk's shoulder the boy's breath had gone wrong, fast and shallow and climbing, the breath of a thing about to bolt; Maruk knew the sound from the camel, and reached back a hand in the dark for the boy's arm.

Beko broke. The boy made a thin sound that was not a word and surged up out of the dark and ran, all his hard-learned caution gone in the one instant, and Maruk lunged and his fingers closed on cold air. A pale shape going up the slope into the blackness, and then no shape, and then nothing, no sandal, no cry on the wind. The dark simply took him. And Maruk knelt with his hand still open on the air and the keeper's mild eye still on him from below, and could not go after, and the boy was gone, and he called it death, because death was the only word the dark had left him to call it by. He had brought a boy with his whole life in front of him to the one place that wears the life out of a man and leaves the body to crawl, and he had lost him here, and the losing went into Maruk in the place his certainty had been, and did not come out again.

The lantern lowered. The bell folded down into its last stroke and was done, and the wrong cold drained out of the ground on the rising wind until a man could half believe he had dreamed it all, the worn, the keeper, the deep slow bell, but for the smell, which stayed. When he made himself look again the keeper was gone and the white lantern was gone, and the field of the fallen lay where it had lain, patient, unhurried, going nowhere.

He did not go down. Whatever sixty hard years had made of Maruk, it had not made him a man who walks toward the thing that has just shown him how small he is. He found the she-camel where she had broken her hobble and run a little way and stopped, trembling, and quieted her with hands that would not be still, and turned her head north and east, back toward the maps and the wells and the comfortable lies of men.

The relic rode against his chest where it had ridden ten years, a map worn to a ghost, the coastlines run together like old bruises, the inked towers of the holds rubbed down to shadow. He had carried it for faith and not for use, for the sake of the one line the rot had spared: pressed so hard into the hide that the stylus had near breached the pelt, set down in a dying scholar's fierce small hand in a manuscript-city that was itself dying around him, the words that had cost Maruk everything he had once been and everyone he had once had.

*The mercy was found, not made.*

He had taken them, those ten years, for a door into a riddle: that the kindness spreading across the dying world on its carts had a source, a first place, and that a man who found the source might understand the thing, and perhaps undo it. He had it now. *Found, not made:* dug up, older than the holds, older than the crown, older than the war no one remembered, out of a grave in the floor of the world that the dying earth bent all its roads toward, that turned no soul away and set them down on their hands at its edges, and rang a bell up through the dark as though something at the bottom of it were still trying, after everything, to say one word it could not finish.

He rode north out of the place the maps miscalled the Lion Mountains with the worn map warm against his chest and the certainty gone out of him forever, and one cold thought lodged where it had been: that he had been right.

This is Part 2 of the first chapter or a grand fantasy tale.

Part 1 here if you are curious: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1tp23ez/712the_veil_between_worlds_opening_paragraphs/

I found this to be the hardest part to know how to write. Character leaves home for adventure and then instantly stumbles into his first quest. It sounds stupid and cliché but also seemed necessary for pacing. Let me know how it comes across and whether you can give it a pass.

-----

The village did not greet him so much as tolerate his arrival.

The cottages were small, close together, and undeniably lived-in. Smoke drifted from chimneys. A few chickens wandered across the road with the self-importance of creatures who owned the place. Doors remained open until he came near them, then eased shut with no particular urgency. Conversations thinned as he passed and resumed behind him, softer than before.

No one stared at him, but no one greeted him either. A man looked up from mending a wheel, met Astred’s eye, and immediately found a fascinating flaw in the axle. A child pointed at his robe before her mother lowered the hand with practiced gentleness. A woman with a basket glanced his way, hesitated, and then pretended she hadn’t seen him at all.

Astred decided that a village had every right to be wary of strangers, especially badly equipped ones.

All right. First tasks.

He looked around, attempting to appear like a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Practical concerns quickly piled up in his mind:

Food. He had none. Breakfast had been a long time ago.

Money. He certainly had none; monasteries were generous with wisdom, not coin.

Shelter. He had a ragged grey dormitory blanket, built for drafts beneath monastery doors, not nights beneath open sky.

A worrying pattern was beginning to form.

His stomach sank. None of the monastery books had covered this part; and the irony wasn’t lost on him that he’d come hoping to help others when, by all appearances, he was the one most in need of guidance.

The chapel looked older than the village around it, as though it had settled into the earth long before Redbrook ever found a reason to gather here. A squat stone nave, timber ribs blackened by time, a bell tower leaning slightly as if listening to the wind. Above the door hung a carved wooden sunburst, its old gold paint faded to dull ochre, its rays cracked at the tips.

Astred paused on the threshold, drawing a slow breath before stepping inside.

The air was cool. Still. Rows of wooden pews stretched into the dimness, their polish worn thin by generations of backsides. A few candles guttered weakly on the altar, their flames shivering at the slightest draft. An elderly priest knelt behind the altar, spine slightly bowed, white hair thin as ash. He did not stir when Astred entered.

Astred cleared his throat softly. "Father…?"

The priest flinched. It was small; barely more than a breath; but unmistakable. He turned slowly, eyes sunken from too many sleepless nights. His robes hung from him like they, too, were tired.

"You’re… not from Redbrook," he said, voice roughened by disuse. "I can see it in the way you stand. A stranger carries his weight differently."

"I suppose I do," Astred admitted. He tried for a reassuring smile, though he wasn’t sure it convinced either of them. "I’ve only just left my monastery. I’m looking for… a beginning, I think. A place I might be of use."

A faint, weary amusement touched the priest’s eyes. "A beginning," he echoed. "Strange choice, coming here for one."

He lowered himself onto the nearest pew, his joints protesting with a soft crackle. After a moment’s hesitation, he gestured for Astred to join him.

"My name is Hender. I’ve tended this chapel for forty years." His voice softened. "Redbrook has seen hardship before. Thin harvests, a winter fever, the odd ruffian who thinks a small village is easy prey. But this…"

He shook his head, staring at his clasped hands.

"This is different."

Astred waited, letting the silence stretch. Hender seemed grateful for the patience; he drew a slow breath and continued.

"People are vanishing," he whispered. "Not running away. Not taken. Vanishing. And the worst of it is: no one will speak of it. Doors lock at sunset, shutters close tight, and every morning the village pretends all is well."

Astred frowned. "They ignore it? Why?"

"That is the puzzle." Hender leaned back, eyes bleak. "Even those who’ve lost loved ones behave as though nothing is missing. They do not mourn. They do not ask questions. It is as if each disappearance smooths itself over, like a stone dropped into mud."

Astred swallowed. "And the faithful?"

Hender let out a thin, humorless breath. "The faithful are no better. My chapel has grown emptier each morning. At first, I thought it was fear. But fear makes people grasp onto faith, not abandon it."

His fingers tightened around each other. "Now it is… indifference. As though prayer has lost its meaning."

Astred glanced around the empty nave again, its silence now oppressive. "But the missing people can't be found anywhere in the village? Have they been seen leaving?"

The priest’s jaw tensed.

"There was a woman," he said at length. "Mara. A widow. Gentle soul. She came to morning prayer two weeks ago, as she always did. She knelt at the altar. Whispered her devotions." He paused, breath catching. "And then she stood."

His voice lowered, barely audible.

"She smiled."

Astred waited. Something in Hender's intonation; he did not mean kindly.

“It was not her smile. Not truly. It sat on her face like something placed there by careful hands. And then she spoke, clear as a bell.”

His throat worked as he swallowed.

"She said, 'I heard it. I heard the song. There’s nothing to fear anymore.'"

A chill prickled across Astred’s skin.

"What did you do?" he asked quietly.

"What could I do?" Hender whispered. "She walked out. Straight out the chapel doors without looking at anyone, and she never returned. No one has seen her since."

He looked suddenly very small, very old.

"And the village?" Astred ventured.

"The village pretends she still lives in her little house by the forest's edge," the priest said, voice trembling. "They speak as though she’s simply feeling unwell, or tending to chores, or visiting distant kin. They have rewritten her absence into something harmless."

He rubbed his temples, hands shaking slightly.

"And sometimes," he added, barely above a breath, "late at night… I think someone watches the chapel. I cannot prove it. I cannot explain it. But the air changes, and the shadows feel… attentive."

Father Hender did not follow Astred immediately. After the long and painful retelling in the chapel, he lingered at the threshold as though the door itself held him upright. The morning light cut across his worn features, hollowing his eyes.

"Mara’s home is by the northern treeline," he said quietly. "I can take you there… but I will not go inside. Some silences in this village feel deliberate."

Astred nodded. "Show me what you can. I’ll manage the rest."

The walk through Redbrook felt different now. The same cottages leaned close to the road, the same smoke lifted from the chimneys, the same villagers went about their errands. But Hender’s story had put a shadow under everything. Their reserve no longer seemed like simple caution, and the silence between houses no longer felt accidental. It felt kept.

Hender slowed as they approached the outskirts. "There," he said, pointing.

Mara’s cottage stood alone near the treeline, its thatched roof slumped with age, its shutters sealed tight. A small garden patch lay overgrown, the soil dry at the edges as though neglected for seasons rather than weeks. The house did not look abandoned; only paused, waiting for someone who would never return.

Hender stopped several paces short of the door. "No one has crossed that threshold since the morning she vanished. The village would sooner pretend the house is occupied than confront what happened inside it."

Astred studied him. The priest’s hands had begun to tremble. This was as far as he would go. On the one hand, Hender seemed to be the one man who was conscious of the strange spell befalling the village; on the other, Astred could not help but wonder if Hender's hesitation to confront the issue himself was part and parcel.

"Wait here," Astred said gently.

The priest exhaled, relieved and ashamed all at once. "Yes. I will… be here."

------

Crit: [1679] https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1uhgeyx/1679_chapter_1_untitled_industrial_fantasy/

TRUCK STOP LOVE

 

He never understood it.

Love.

The holidays.

Family.

His feelings were still there. Rusted. No shine left. Warped just enough to let him live with all the goddamn evil things he kept doing.

A station wagon with a rear-facing seat cut him off, and his palms slapped the steering wheel. Sitting in the seat was a pale girl, about seven or eight, glaring at him. She wore a princess dress, and occasionally, the dying light from the sunset behind them bounced off the sequins that were scattered on her shoulder pads.

She smiled, her left front tooth missing, before giving him the finger and giggling.

Fucking brat.

He smiled back, turned his head sideways, stuck his tongue out, and dragged a stiff finger across his throat. Now Princess looked like she was going to be sick. She put her head down, letting her brown locks block her eyes, he knew, though, he knew she could feel his eyes on her.

A second later her hair flew wildly as the station wagon swerved. He saw the pieces of truck tire just in time to plow into them.

Fucking kids! Monsters. All of them!

He pulled over got out and surveyed the damage. While walking around the navy sedan, he saw that the right front tire was completely blown out. Another expense. He made his way around the trunk. His cleaning budget this month had really taken a bite out of the bank account. The fucking lightweight the other night couldn’t keep his stomach in the trunk until he got him out? People drove him crazy.

The freeway was sparse with traffic, it was 9:39 PM and wouldn’t you know it? His cell phone was dead. Your incompetence is annoying, always charge the goddamn phone.

The rain started coming down as he sat in his little Corolla with Eighteen wheelers rattling his windows as they blew by. He plugged his phone and charger into the car lighter and waited. He closed his eyes.

A dull light pushed through his eyelids, and they flew open. Behind him the lights shone so brightly the reflection off the mirrors blinded him. From the height of them, it had to be a big truck. What the hell do you want?

He checked his phone. 9:52 PM.

His eyes darted to the side mirror. A large moving shadow blocked the lights.

A lumberjack of a man with a pouched belly and oak branch limbs moved towards the driver side. As he got to the window, he took in a few heavy breaths, then he rotated his fist to say- roll it down. The man smiled big, like the dimwitted Rottweiler his stepdad had. Hit the thing with his dad’s tractor when he was fourteen. It was an interesting noise. He put the window down.

As soon as it cracked the big man spoke, “I saw what happened. And on behalf of all truckers, I am sorry.” He gave a big, heavy laugh, making his bushy handlebar mustache do the wave.

Who is this guy?

The Paul-Bunyan looking trucker had to be at least 6’5. Easily 300 pounds. The man leaned in real close resting his arms on top of the car, the Corolla's suspension ached.

“Yeah,” he said back. “No hard feelings.”

The big man rolled his plaid sleeves up his forearms and rested them on the window frame, “Name’s Jimmy or James? You friend?”

He rubbed his face to stall while he thought up a name. He really didn’t want to be connected to this area, don’t eat where you shit or don’t throw your shit where you eat. Whatever it was, he didn’t want that. “Kevin Johnson.”

Jimmy grabbed his shoulder through the window, and Jimmy's other hand met his for a wildly uneven shake. “Pleasure to meet you son.”

For a second Kevin thought the guy was going to get stuck in the window but somehow his large shoulder slinked out. “You too.” He replied.

“Come!” Jimmy said his eyes were no longer visible as he stood. “I’ll drive you into town. Get you a tow.”

Jimmy didn’t wait for Kevin though. No, Jimmy slogged back to the truck just expected him to run behind him. He wanted to kill that guy just for that. Or should he say? He was hoping he wouldn’t have to kill the guy. But if he did, he would have to do it quick and hope he stayed down.

Kevin got out of the car after grabbing a lighter and a pack of smokes. Then he reached back into the console and grabbed a 45. and tucked it into his belt and pulled his coat over it. He ran up to the truck and jumped into the passenger seat.

Critique 1

 

Critique 2

Hi all,
 
I am writing a small horror fanfic anthology set in the 40k universe. Each chapter is a self-contained arc and you don't need prior knowledge of the setting to follow the stories overly.
 
*Contains some body horror imagery hence the NSFW tag.
 
I have recently edited down this one pretty heavily and need some outside eyes to review the narrative flow, prose density and really if the ending holds up.

[1093] - Review One
[794] - Review Two
[2408] - Review Three

Octus

Directionless, his mind drifted in the black. His awareness pushed back against the void but found no edge, no boundary. Emptiness, claustrophobic in its totality. He screamed out for something tangible, something to anchor himself to, and the void answered back, blooming in his chest like a rotten fruit splitting open, tendrils of need uncoiling through meat and bone. His fingers lengthened, curling, but too many fingers. Limbs that were not his own thrashed and tore in the dark.

Hunger.

Raw, endless, devouring. A starvation that hollowed him out to the core. A need to consume and fill a void that stretched far beyond him, pulling at his edges until he couldn't tell where he ended and it began. His mind howled in the darkness. His chin was slick with drool that flowed thick and hot from clenched jaws. He bit down and tasted hot, living flesh. Blood flooded his mouth, thick and sweet, and he tore again, and again, and felt a thousand other mouths doing the same, rending, chewing, swallowing in unison. The void inside him only grew.
He forced his eyes open.
The dark looked back. Countless eyes stared from the black, wet and lidless, each one echoing the same hunger.

Octus woke choking on his own bile. Sweat soaked the thin sheet beneath him. The sensation of tiny claws scuttling across his skin. He didn't dare return to sleep, instead whimpering in the corner of his cramped hab, worn blankets wrapped around him, knees drawn to his chest. The ceaseless light of the surrounding hive spilled through his frayed curtains, casting shadows that shifted of their own volition. He sat hunched like that for hours, his only companions the groan of the spire around him and the occasional call to prayer reverberating through the hive.
 
He dressed in the half-dark. The same grey tunic he wore every shift, washed so many times it had gone soft at the collar and thin at the elbows. He felt through a metal shelf bolted to the hab wall. A dog-eared volume of Imperial statute, a tin of caffeine tabs, a pict-still of a woman he no longer spoke to. Ah, his hands found the sigil of his office, pressed into a disc of cheap metal. He pocketed it quickly and pulled on a coat before heading out the door into the dim hall of the hab building, its lights flickering persistently.

The causeway teemed with scribes and workers, the air sticky with the press of humanity. Each breath left a residue that clung to his teeth, greasy and faintly sweet. The recyc-units churned overhead, doing little more than stirring the warmth from one body into the next. Lamps threw out sickly yellow light that barely pushed back the gloom. He breathed through his mouth and that was worse. He could taste them, the crowd, the sweat-salt and shed skin of a thousand bodies packed into a corridor built for half that number. A transit-hauler rumbled past on the mag-rail above, close enough that the vibration loosened grit from the track, falling in slow swirls that hung in the humid air.

Octus’s watch told him it was mid-morning, but it might as well have been night, for all the  light that clawed through the cloud-choked skies. Underfoot, the metal grating was worn smooth by generations of boots, and somewhere below it he could hear the dull rush of water or waste moving through the spire's guts.
 
A gauntleted hand against his chest snapped him out of his reveries. The crowd pressed at his back, warm and damp, threatening to swallow him again.
“Present ID. I won’t ask again,” said the Arbitrator, his voice pinched and split by vox distortion.

Octus handed over his worn ID chit and turned to the eye scanner embedded in the skull of the servitor beside the Arbitrator. It clicked and whirred as it read his red-rimmed eye. His gaze drifted. The skin around the servitor’s cranial implants was swollen and dark, pulled tight where the rivets bit deep and loose where the flesh had begun to give up, sagging in soft folds that glistened under the lamplight. Its mouth opened and closed in a slow mechanical rhythm, as though gasping for air, each gape revealing the wet stub of a tongue that had been cut short. His gaze caught on the soft swell of flesh around the rivets, and something wet gathered under his tongue.
He swallowed. His mouth was slick. He looked away and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

++Name: Octus Aemilius++ 
++Occupation: Lex Investigator++ 
++Cleared For Access++

The Arbitrator thrust the ID chit back into his hand and pushed him through the checkpoint. "Next," he yelled, paying no further attention to Octus.
 
The Lex offices occupied a long, low hall on the 43rd tier, grime-streaked windows looking down on the plaza below, already ringing with the steady hum of the morning shift. He grabbed a cup of recaff, already cold, before heading to his desk.

Octus hung his coat on the hook, sat, and switched on his terminal. The screen crackled as it warmed into focus. While it warmed, he arranged the pile of reports that greeted him, thumbing through a couple as he settled. More missing-person cases, an increase in abhuman activity, demands from the upper spire. He set them aside and pulled the first toward him for transcription, switching on recording. The screen swam into focus, a feed from the lower city, shaky pict-capture of a hab-block swallowed in fire.

The Arbitrator’s post-action account droned on. Octus copied it down in neat Gothic, half-listening to the words as his stylus moved. Arbites deployment. Manufactorum lockdowns. Casualties listed in numbers too clean to mean anything.
He paused to dip his auto-quill into more ink, and glanced down.

Maw.

The word sat in the middle of the page where a sentence should have been. His handwriting, his ink. His stylus trembling faintly in his hand.
The ink bled. It doubled, spreading outward in a slow crawl across the lines of neat Gothic. Maw. Maw. Maw. Eating into the margins, swallowing the careful script, the letters bloating and darkening until they were all one thing, a stain devouring the white of the page from the centre out.

He looked down at his hand. It was still wrapped around the stylus, knuckles white, fingers locked so tight the tendons stood out like cabling. Dropping the pen, he pressed his palms into his eyes, grinding them against the sockets until light burst behind his lids and pain flared sharp and clean through his skull. He held it there, teeth clenched, until the world behind his hands was nothing but white heat.
When he pulled them away, the page was still there. Neat Gothic. Clean margins. The Arbitrator’s account, exactly as dictated.

A halting breath escaped his lips. He finished the report and thrust it into the tray of a collection servitor as it rumbled past, forcing his eyes back to the screen as the paper left his hand. Three aisles over, Supervisor Ohar stopped the servitor with an outstretched hand. She drew the top sheet from the tray and read it in silence. Her gaze lingered.
She looked up.

Her eyes found him across the hall. He held her gaze a beat too long before he forced his eyes back down and made his hand move, made the stylus touch paper, made the shape of a man working.

She came down the aisle without hurry, the sharp click of heels cutting through the scratching of styluses around them; heads down, nobody watching, everybody watching. She laid the page flat on his desk and smoothed it with two fingers.

His handwriting. His ink. Six lines of the Arbitrator's account in clean Gothic, and then the script folding in on itself. Maw. Hundreds deep, packed to the margins in a black crush, the last of them gouged in hard enough to tear the paper.

She knocked her heavy signet ring against the desk twice, and he understood the gesture only when hands closed on him from behind, gauntleted. His head cracked against the desk, pain flaring at the base of his skull where the press of metal bit into his skin.

"I didn't write that," Octus said.
"It's your hand."
"I didn't—" He heard himself. Stopped. His mouth had gone slick again, flooding from under the tongue, and he swallowed and it welled back, warm, insistent.
Pain tore at him as the hands hauled him up out of his chair so fast his knee cracked the desk and the recaff went over, brown across the reports. His arms were wrenched up behind his back until the sockets burned. Trickles of blood seeping from the small cuts at the base of his skull.

Nobody in the hall looked up. They forced him down the aisle he had walked every morning, bent double, boots skidding. Fifty styluses kept scratching.
"Wait. Wait. I haven't done anything." His voice came out wrong, wet at the edges. "Supervisor. Ohar. I haven't done anything wrong."

In this scene, I am trying to build up tension and portray emotional manipulation, abusive dynamics. I am really working on trying to show the emotions through the description rather than just describe the emotions. I would love some feedback into how this piece makes you feel as a reader, what subtext do you pick up on? I want to see if my points are landing for someone who doesn't know the context or the details in my head.

There is a line in the last paragraph 'It had been nearly a week since I'd picked them up on the last food shop.' that I am curious to see if a reader can pick up on the importance of...

Also, I am somehow struggling with using the past tense when I slip more into the character's inner monologue. Especially when she is thinking 'I could' or 'I should' - are there any weird tenses here?

The narrator is 13, the man is her stepdad. I hope that's all the context you need and the story does the rest! I appreciate any and all feedback!

Trigger warning: emotional abuse, swearing.

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

Strawberries

Juice dripped down the side of my arm. I caught it with my tongue before it could drip onto the carpet. I sat on the floor, legs sprawled, back leaning against the arm of the sofa. It felt so good to be off my feet. I deliberated whether I was impressed or disgusted with myself for eating the whole punnet - strawberries in June are hard to put down when you start. They had been sitting in the fridge for almost a week now. They would have turned soon enough if I hadn’t finished them. 

I heard heavy footprints coming down the corridor. I glanced up at the door and let out a breath seeing it was closed. My hands were too sticky to touch the remote, so TV was out. The sun was warm on my face, streaming through the glass doors out to the garden. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, delaying getting up and doing the next 5 things on my list. I needed to shower, I had an essay due the next day which was only half written, I wondered if anyone was using the computer - I could have gone to see who was on MSN instead. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but someone needed to start dinner before Josh ate all the cereal.

A clang in the kitchen jolted me out of the trance. 

‘Who ate my strawberries?’ He was bellowing, the bass in his voice vibrated through the wall. 

I heard a door slam upstairs and then nothing. I looked down at the bowl of green stems in front of me, back up at the door, out to the garden. I held my breath and listened. I decided to take the bowl up to the bathroom with me. I could clean up and then take the stems out to the grassy patch at the end of the road later. 

I peeked out through a crack in the door, nothing. I slowly opened it and slipped through. A few more steps to the bottom stair and I got away with it, but I caught his eye as I looked over my right shoulder. 

‘Where are you going with that bowl? You know there is no food upstairs’, his voice was steady, calm. 

‘Oh, I was just… I was going to clean it up’, I turned on my heel and headed back towards the kitchen, I avoided meeting his eyes as we passed each other. 

‘Did you eat my strawberries?’

‘I guess, well, I didn’t realise they were your strawberries…’, the silence lingered. I waited to see where he would take this next. We stood in unbearable stillness. I relented, ‘I just ate a few’.

‘You know I have been on my diet, that’s all I can eat right now. What am I supposed to eat now that you scoffed them all?’

He edged closer to me as he spoke. I cleared up the evidence as if erasing any trace of eaten strawberries could unwind this conversation. 

‘I thought they were just for everyone and no one else was eating them. It’s just strawberries, there are still grapes, and there is bacon. You ate that last time you did the diet, right? It’s the Atkins one?’ I moved towards the fridge, ready to start pulling out ingredients. ‘You could have, erm, let’s see, maybe I could mak-’

He reached his hand over my head and pushed the fridge closed slowly. ‘You know I can’t eat any of that on my diet. Your Mum bought those strawberries for me to eat specifically.’

‘I didn’t even know you were on a diet. It’s just food in the fridge. They were about to go off anyway… we can get some more strawberries.' My voice jumped up an octave and I took a step back to face him properly. 

‘You touch things that aren't yours. That is your problem. Are you going to go and buy more? Oh no… you expect me to go, on a Sunday, when it is busy, restock the fridge, make sure you have enough strawberries to scoff while you sit around and do what?’ He didn’t wait for an answer, but carried on, calm, steady, slow. He always spoke slowly so you were never sure when it was your turn to chime back in. ‘You kids just sit around, make a mess and expect me to do everything. And you ate them all? You didn’t think to share… so selfish. Do you not think about your family? You don’t care about my diet or what I am going to eat, just yourself and whatever suits you…’

‘What’s the big fucking deal? They’re just strawberries!’ I spat out the words. My face flushed. I fixed my eyes on the floor and let my spine curve over and my shoulders drop. I clicked my fingers, a joint at a time, getting faster as I moved from one hand to the next.

He smiled. 

‘You don’t dare fucking speaking to me like that. You selfish little brat.’ 

‘We can get more strawberries. I am doing the shop tomorrow, I will just buy more’, I blurted out before he could carry on. I felt a knot at the back of my throat, white noise flooded my ears. 

I barely registered his reply, despite the volume, ‘What fucking good does that do me today?’

We were both yelling. A flurry of words completely engulfed me. I couldn’t make sense of them any more. ‘Lazy’ barrelled through me, ‘Brat’ stung hard, ‘Selfish’ whacked into me with such force that I just stopped. I stopped yelling - he didn’t. My neck was hot, I could feel tears about to escape my eyes. I ran past him to the front door, grabbed my shoes, my bag off the hook, I was finally outside.   

I walked quickly, rummaging around in my bag, hoping I still had that £10 my dance teacher gave me yesterday for helping out with the younger classes. I went straight to the shop and I bought three punnets of strawberries. I was surprised to see they were still on sale. It had been nearly a week since I'd picked them up on the last food shop. When I got home, every door was closed. I snuck them into the fridge and retreated to my room. An hour later, I heard my Mum’s shrill shrieks, followed by his low roar, the theme tune for this house. The strawberries sat in the fridge for 3 weeks before I eventually threw them out.

[1355] Crit

Hii! A collection of some of my works. I was going to just post them like this, but a doc is easier, I think? I will say, some are more purposefully edgy, so beware, I guess. Fun little thing to add on, I usually envision these pieces with some kind of music, although they're not exactly meant to be lyrics.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSkcBJMgEc5LqKTMjNPH9fcum4JOJ-q0-pchhCsiE8fiiwxcyj85CTC1uVBcCv8OCUNV3zg6ptRHPC0/pub

My critiques: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1ujevvm/comment/ouw0hu6/

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1u8tz4t/comment/osewnxi/

I linked the first chapter last week which is available for free online. She gives examples of other works (in the public domain) that use language in a fun way. I actually have a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God that's moved across the country with me multiple times and I've only read once. The interesting part about some of the authors that are picked out here: they're not afraid to use dialect. Modern writing says NO ACCENTS WRITTEN PHONETICALLY because it makes it hard to read. But then you have someone like Nora Zeale Hurston who writes

>"At dat she ain't so ole as some of y'all dat's talking"

Or

>"Don't keer what it was, she could stop and say a few words with us. She act like we done done something to her," Pearl Stone complained. "She de one been doin' wrong."

And there's a way in which that dialogue feels a lot more real to me. If I'm reading out loud in my head, I can hear these women discussing. Maybe that's an art we lost and everyone wants things to be in clean English nowadays.

But the point being made in this first chapter is:

>A story is made out of language, and language can and does express delight in itself just as music does.

The two exercises for this chapter are:

1. Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that's meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect--any kind of sound effect you like--but NOT rhyme or meter.

2. In a paragraph or so, describe an action, or a person, feeling strong emotion--joy, fear, grief. Try to make the rhythm and movement of the sentences embody or represent the physical reality you're writing about.

As always, there's no fee to participating in the weekly so save your crits. If you try the exercises, leave a top level comment and just let us know which one you did. Everyone is welcome to comment on how successful they think the attempt was (unless the author says they want no comments).

But remember: READ THEM OUT LOUD TO YOURSELF. Make a vocaroo and send it directly to u/glowylaptop. Flood him with sound.

I'm going to add a few more top level comments for discussion. Feel free to participate in those as well.

Romance centered story placed in dystopian setting. Over ten years writing as hobby, first time working a story I hope to publish some day. All kind of feedback would be appreciated. Would also like to know if first chapter is something that would keep you reading on?

CHAPTER ONE — HIS NAME

The doors to the medical wing slid open with a sharp hiss. There were two square windows set into them, one on each panel, probably intended to make the place feel less institutional. Everly had thought, more times than she could count across six years of walking through these doors, that it might have helped if you could actually see through them.

She had a narrow strip of green cloth tied around her right elbow, where they had just drawn blood (the second time this year, the next was scheduled for October), when two soldiers in black Gradex uniforms pushed through in front of her. One was supporting the other, whose weight leaned heavily against him as he limped forward, jaw set hard against the pain. Both were muddy and their boots left a trail of mud on the floor. She had yet to learn their names.

Everly barely spared them a glance. It was the one who came in after them that caught her attention.

She would have recognised him anywhere. No one else in Gradex let their hair grow that long — dark and falling to his shoulders, damp from the rain outside and sticking slightly to his jaw and collar. His jacket was wet, glued to his shoulders under the dark grey Armorex-vest they were supposed to use outside of the compound. Nothing excessive in him, just the kind of build that came from use rather than effort. He was holding his right hand with his left, just below the elbow, and there was a handful of shallow scratches across his face from something she hadn’t been there to see.

Cade.

He had arrived in March. It was June now. Thirteen weeks of him moving through the compound like he had always been there, quiet in a way that was nothing like absence. He kept to himself, stood still at the edge of the room in briefings and didn’t speak if he didn’t need to. Most words she had ever heard him use in one conversation had been in the yard on the first day.

The fingers pressing the pad curled, just slightly. She flattened them against her skin and let the arm drop.

The limping soldier was guided to the nearest bed immediately. Cade took the one on the other side of the room without being told, more out of convenience than obedience, she suspected, and started rolling up what remained of his sleeve. One of the medics on shift today, the one with no name and no patience, pulled the instrument table next to the bed and settled into the chair beside it.

“It’s nothing,” Cade said.

“Blade?” the medic asked.

Cade nodded.

“Then it’s not nothing,” the medic replied flatly, already cutting away the fabric to expose the wound beneath. “Did you water it?”

Cade glanced down at his soaked clothes. One eyebrow went up.

“What does it look like?”

That earned him a look. Not from the medic. From Everly. The corner of her mouth moved before she could stop it.

He noticed. His arm moved on the table before he caught it.

“Hold still.” The medic guided the arm flat again and started cleaning the wound.

It wasn’t deep enough to be dangerous, but the edges of it told a different story, showing the damage that only the white stone of a Blade left behind. A clean cut from little above his wrist to the elbow where the stone had gone in surrounded by the specific deep red discolouration of tissue that had met something hotter than metal and yet burned without heat. The burn spreading in every direction, the way a Blade burn did until it was watered, reaching well past the line the stone had made.

Cade didn’t look at his arm. He looked at hers instead.

“That’s why you skipped the morning?”

Everly frowned and started walking. Not away, just to a better position, which was not the same thing. She was aware of the distinction even if she didn’t examine it.

“Mandatory screening. I got transferred to group five later today. Didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“Yeah.” He tilted his head and she could see the smile tugging at his lips. A quiet huff followed. “I noticed.”

She stopped a few steps away. Her gaze dropped to his arm, where the medic was halfway through the stitches. The medic turned his head, just enough to place her in his peripheral vision, then brought his eyes back to his work without meeting hers. Cade was still watching the medic when she looked at his face and said:

“Didn’t know they’d ask you.”

“They didn’t.” He turned to look at her. “Ask.”

She knew that. In Gradex you were told, not asked.

“You were late.”

“That’s what usually happens when somebody tries to kill you.” The eyebrow went up again. “Missed me?”

She kept her lips pressed together until she was sure the smile was gone. Not letting it show took more effort than it should have.

“No. We just can’t afford to lose more men right now.”

That almost made him laugh. She could see it, the way it moved through him before he contained it.

“Careful. Someone might think you care.”

“I don’t.” Too quick. She heard it even herself.

The medic pushed the needle through with more force than necessary. The next knot he drew too tight, pulling that stitch out of line with the rest. Everly’s eyes cut to him. Cade himself didn’t seem to mind.

“What happened?” she asked. An unnecessary question, and she knew it. Only one group out there had gotten their hands on Gradex weapons. Had she been out there like she would have without the bloodwork, she wouldn’t even have needed to ask.

“An echo.”

It wasn’t the first time he had given her an answer that wasn’t one.

She let her gaze settle on the wound for a moment longer than she intended. After the medic had made his point, the rest of the stitching was clean, at least. Looking the other way didn’t seem to be the only thing the nameless medic was good at.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

She brought her eyes up from the wound. “I wasn’t worried.”

The sigh came out of the chair beside Cade. She pretended she hadn’t heard it.

“Can’t be the first Blade cut you’ve seen,” Cade said. “I heard you’ve been here since the beginning.”

Like she needed him to remind her.

She brought her eyes from Cade to her arm, where a narrow strip of green cloth was tied behind her elbow. Six years ago it would have been a disposable cotton pad, but ever since Erasmus had rewritten everything and Gradex had transformed, one thin strip of cloth at a time, from a Gravity Center research compound full of scientists doing genetic mapping into a military compound where those same scientists were now searching for answers to something harder and more necessary, they had learned to replace what once was with what still remained.

She’d been cutting those strips often enough to know that there would never be a shortage of cloth. The dead had left more clothes than those still living would ever have use for.

Some adaptations had been easier than others.

“It’s not that simple.” This time there was no smile to hide.

“Didn’t say it was.” He held her gaze. “It’s just all I’ve heard.”

The medic tied off the last stitch without ceremony. He took a long strip of white fabric, an old sheet by the look of it, and wound it over the stitches. “That should do it. Try not to tear it open again.” He took a small Ekezo tube from the table and pressed it into Cade’s right hand. “And don’t forget to apply this. Twice a day for a week. It keeps the scar from drawing tight as it heals.”

“No promises.”

The medic gave Cade a disapproving look and moved off to help with the others. He didn’t look at her when he went past her. Cade kept watching the medic, then slid off the bed and flexed his arm slowly, testing the range. Everly’s eyes followed the movement before she caught herself and looked away.

He noticed that. She was fairly certain he noticed everything.

“Hey,” he said quietly, stepping closer. Close enough that she was aware of the height difference; he had nearly twenty-five centimetres on her, which she had also spent all those three months pretending not to notice. She couldn’t see the medic and the others behind him anymore. “It looks worse than it is.”

“I—”

“If you say that one more time, I might believe you.”

She didn’t answer. What she had been about to say, she couldn’t make herself finish.

His gaze moved from her face to her braids. Two Dutch braids today, all different shades of brown pulled back with a precision that had nothing to do with Gradex’s standards, falling past her shoulders and down her back. Something crossed his face. Then his hand lifted. Slow enough that she could have stepped back.

Everly went very still. She remembered how it felt: a hand twisting around a braid, pulling hard enough to force her head to the side. She also remembered the only time the hand had found her hair loose, and what had followed. The memory lived in her body more than her mind. The kind that didn’t need to be thought to be present.

The mark would always be there. One of the many.

The hand that was approaching her now closed gently around one braid. Holding it the way you’d hold something that mattered.

“See?” His thumb moved once along the braid. “Still works.”

“What does?” She heard the confusion in her own voice, unguarded in a way she hadn’t meant.

“My hand.”

The doors to the medical wing slid open again. Thomas stepped in, his uniform still wet from rain but his cropped sand-coloured hair already dry. Hands in his pockets. His eyes went to Cade then her and back to Cade. He cleared his throat.

When that didn’t get him what he’d hoped for, he said, “Cade. You need to come with me. The report still needs filing.”

Cade didn’t look at him. He took his time replacing the braid exactly where he’d found it, his fingertips brushing the bare skin above her collarbone before he turned towards the door.

Thomas waited. He didn’t appear to have a choice.

Cade was halfway across the room when Everly found her voice.

“Try not to die out there.”

The words were out before she could take them back. Quiet enough that only he would hear and completely unplanned, which was the part that bothered her most.

Cade paused. He glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes finding hers before he spoke. The smile that followed was one she hadn’t seen before. Small. It reached his eyes in a way the smirk she had come to know never had.

“That one,” he said, “I can promise.”

Then he was through the doors. Everly didn’t follow. She looked at the floor where his footprints had landed in the mud, her eyes passing a small, pale grey pebble right in front of the door. She untied the fabric strip from her elbow and threw it in the bin instead. The hand, freed from the cloth, found the braid before she’d decided to let it. Her fingers settled on the exact place where his had just been. She couldn’t escape the feeling that he had just said more than he meant to.

Critique(s): https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1uic1bc/2005_litrpg_opening_chapter_attempt_2/