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Thread: Fourth Day Without Slumber

  1. #1

    Fourth Day Without Slumber

    This is one of my first "mature" stories. Wrote it back when I was 13 or so.(My mom made me go to church back then, but still never really believed) Hope you like this. Thanks:

    Fourth Day Without Slumber

    By: Athena-The-Real

    Today is the fourth day that melancholy has kept me away from my slumber. The sorrow that seeps through my mind is the death of one who was dear to me. She was the first unexpected death I had experienced in my short amount of years, her name was Rebecca, and I loved her more than anyone in my life. Ever since she was gripped by death four days ago I've found sleep to be an impossibility. I am now prone to hallucinations due to my weakened mind. I take another shot of the liquor that I had found in the backend of my cabinet, my sigh tainted with the aroma of alcohol, but only briefly as I feel a presence that was not my own. My eyes bolt as my shoulders turn to my door(that was to my left), but as I do that I hear a noise from my right, I knew at this moment that I was not alone as the anxiety rushes through my mind and I slowly turn around. What I saw at that moment in my home bar was so utterly horrifying that I had to be thrown back off of my seat by the being's terrifying nature in which I dare not look into its illuminating golden eyes. It stood about three meters in height. But as it hunched to get its eyes closer it was only about half its initial height. I froze in the fear of how this abomination would end my life, my breath began to speed. It brings one of six of its terrible appendages closer to my chest and grips onto my filthy coverings. I try my best to struggle my way out, the queer squirms that my body made in this effort were only enough to make this being laugh in mockery of my futile efforts. Then it places me down, "You remember taking the life of your love, yes? You are the one who brought verbal abuse until she just couldn't take it anymore! You are the one who might as well have brought the end of a barrel to her temple and pull the trigger. Ye shouted at her 'Thou whore! Thou whore! Thou vixxen! You dare to sleep with another man!' And even after she brought you remorse, ye still brought thine wrath upon her in the form of words!" The demon laughs. Snatching a bottle of vodka and drinking it, the whole bottle. "Then ye felt the need to drown yourself into the bottle so you may avoid responsibility, isn't that of the most humorous?"
    "No, you lie the most terrible of lies! I haven't caused her death, I would never spew the hatred of which ye accuse!" I say to the beast with a scent of bitterness and alcohol behind my breath. Wanting so badly to swing a fist at the foul creature, but not doing so as it felt as if my hands were weighted down with giant stones.
    "Oh but it is true! Thine very anger of catching thy wife as a common whore brought thee down this road." The beast rebuttals, a sinister grin plastered onto its face.
    "Be gone, foul demon! Ye haft no reason here!" I shout in a fit of rage. Sweat beading on my forehead, "I shall not fall to your temptations of self murder!" I say again as I saw the window afar that had been left ajar. The harsh and bitter wind rustling the curtains.
    "Ooh but thou will! Thou be the cause of thine wife's self murder. And I alone will be the cause of thy self-murder as well!" It snickers as it places another disgusting appendage onto my shoulder. "Now leap from thy window! Thou art the only of humans who shall deserve such fate!"
    I strike the beasts appendage with my right palm in answer that it dare make such suggestions. "Go away! I need not your words of negativity clouding my judgement in my times of mourning!" I ejaculate to the creature. My voice with rage, waters streaming down my eyes as the wretched being leans in and locks it's eyes with mine, and that is when I saw my own reflection. A man who wallowed in his own guilt, a man who had been destroyed from the inside out. My voice began to tremble as I back away from the demon, my sense of reality returning as I tried my best to make words in the gibberish. "What are you!" I question the beast with aggression. "Why must you torment me this way!?" I say even louder this time. The creature begins a fit of laughter as it brings itself closer, each of its six appendages making the soundings of a tapping against the marble floor.
    "I be what keep thou from thine slumber. I be thine fear and thine guilt. Thou cannot escape my grip until death rips thou from my grip!" The being asserts to me as it jerks its head forward, its golden eyes glowing with more passion than it had before. The fear stricken into my heart at that moment was more than sufficient to cause starting, my left leg stepping back first as the right soon followed and I was at the window, "Thou shall commit self-murder! Commit, thou be a lowly human whom deserve no better a death than that of leaping from the window which shall be thy gate to hell!" The demon ejaculates as I begin my loss of rational thought and the mental agony this Satan has brought me forces me to my knees. The thoughts of self murder becoming more enticing as I breathe heavily as if I had to run; I look to my open window, I feel the excitement of the beast inside of me. I bring my eyes to a close as I bring myself to the brink of the open window. I leap, and after that moment my eyes had never opened again.
    Last edited by Athena-The-Real; 09-12-2016 at 11:05 AM. Reason: Credits inputing

  2. #2
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    For a 13-year-old author that's very good. It is fast paced, vivid, and imaginative. If you want to develop it (now that you are presumably older), I would suggest that you divide up that huge first paragraph into smaller units in which there is more showing and less telling. Let the reader get creeped out gradually by a slower, scarier discovery of the demon in the liquor cabinet (which I loved, by the way). And maybe the creature could haunt the narrator a bit more before the story's end. Remember that horror is best when it's drawn out slowly as s u s p e n s e.

    If you do decide on a rewrite, you may want to reconsider the end in any case. Does it really resolve anything? How about if the narrator and the demon ended up having a longer conflict? Maybe the demon could possess her (or just keep haunting her) and try to get her to kill herself, but she finds she is able to fight it off--but can she continue to do so? Meanwhile the demon could prevail on her to do increasingly bad things. A potential resolution could be that the narrator (who thinks she is responsible for her friend's death) discovers--against the demons will--that it's all a lie; someone (the demon?; a false friend?) has done it and somehow tricked her into thinking that she's to blame (but how?) So will she discover the truth and free herself from the possession/haunting or will she succumb to the lie and kill herself? That is the crisis you need to resolve. If it turns out to be suicide, by the way, you need to account for how the narrator can tell the story when she's dead. Is she in hell? Limbo? Some other place? An alternative would be just to switch into the third person, although I think the story is more vivid left in the first. I like your use of the present tense, too. It helps keep things vivid and intense.

    I hope that (constructive) criticism was helpful in case you do try to develop the story. Of course the more you can tell us about the narrator--the more you can make us care whether she kills herself or not--the more jolt your story will have. Good luck with it!
    Last edited by Pompey Bum; 09-12-2016 at 02:49 PM.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Pompey Bum View Post
    For a 13-year-old author that's very good. It is fast paced, vivid, and imaginative. If you want to develop it (now that you are presumably older), I would suggest that you divide up that huge first paragraph into smaller units in which there is more showing and less telling. Let the reader get creeped out gradually by a slower, scarier discovery of the demon in the liquor cabinet (which I loved, by the way). And maybe the creature could haunt the narrator a bit more before the story's end. Remember that horror is best when it's drawn out slowly as s u s p e n s e.

    If you do decide on a rewrite, you may want to reconsider the end in any case. Does it really resolve anything? How about if the narrator and the demon ended up having a longer conflict? Maybe the demon could possess her (or just keep haunting her) and try to get her to kill herself, but she finds she is able to fight it off--but can she continue to do so? Meanwhile the demon could prevail on her to do increasingly bad things. A potential resolution could be that the narrator (who thinks she is responsible for her friend's death) discovers--against the demons will--that it's all a lie; someone (the demon?; a false friend?) has done it and somehow tricked her into thinking that she's to blame (but how?) So will she discover the truth and free herself from the possession/haunting or will she succumb to the lie and kill herself? That is the crisis you need to resolve. If it turns out to be suicide, by the way, you need to account for how the narrator can tell the story when she's dead. Is she in hell? Limbo? Some other place? An alternative would be just to switch into the third person, although I think the story is more vivid left in the first. I like your use of the present tense, too. It helps keep things vivid and intense.

    I hope that (constructive) criticism was helpful in case you do try to develop the story. Of course the more you can tell us about the narrator--the more you can make us care whether she kills herself or not--the more jolt your story will have. Good luck with it!
    Thank you Pompy. I actually came here for critique. And it means a lot that it came in the timely manner that it did. I will take all of what you have said into consideration when(or if) a rewrite comes.
    Many thanks,
    ATR

  4. #4
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    Oh, you are very welcome. I meant to mention, too, that I like the title. You might have to change it slightly (to "Six Days Without Slumber" or something if you decide to expand it). The premise of sleep deprivation is interesting in this kind of story because the human mind can't take very much, and the result of extended sleeplessness is temporary psychosis. That might be helpful if you wanted to explore the idea of struggling against the demon for days.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Pompey Bum View Post
    Oh, you are very welcome. I meant to mention, too, that I like the title. You might have to change it slightly (to "Six Days Without Slumber" or something if you decide to expand it). The premise of sleep deprivation is interesting in this kind of story because the human mind can't take very much, and the result of extended sleeplessness is temporary psychosis. That might be helpful if you wanted to explore the idea of struggling against the demon for days.
    Yeeeeeee, but for now I'm working on part two of my other *very* short story. Then a few other things like school. I don't like writing essays. But it must be done. Now I'm typing all of this extra stuff to stall the writing of this essay.

  6. #6
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    Write the essay.

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