My first short story... Silence

[mace9984]

Hey guys, this is my first short story (and my first post here). Please let me know what you think. Constructive criticism is always appreciated.

It wasn’t a noise that woke him. The man had gotten used to all the noise. The traffic, sirens, and feet scuffling by his window had long ago blended together into a static white noise; it calmed him, and helped him fall asleep. The man laid there for a few minutes with his eyes shut, trying to pinpoint the enigma. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t figure it out. It was right there, but every time he got close, it would vanish like shadows when a light is turned on. All of the sudden the man grasped the shadow, and realized what was different this morning. After all the years of noise in his first story apartment, it was silent. There was a slight chill down the man’s neck as he started to get out of bed. It was 8am on a Tuesday morning the man thought to himself. The street noise should have been loud enough to hear from his bed. There was nothing though. No car engines, no shouting pedestrians, no sirens. Silence. The floor was colder then usual he noted as he stood up. Somewhere in the back of his brain he thought that was probably due to his mild state of panic, releasing adrenaline into his system, and raising his awareness. Despite his increased body functions, he still couldn’t hear a single sound. His ears have the slight ring that only absolute silence brings. The only noise he can hear is his heart thumping in his chest. He makes his way to the curtains. The man takes a breath and jerks the curtains open. There is a face looking at him, a face with one eye, and half a cheek. Then, finally, noise, as the hands bust through the glass and grab the man. He’s drug out the window in seconds. The man struggles, screams, begs. A few seconds later…. Silence.

[Captain_Kuchiki]

Hmmmmmm...

I like the tense and mysterious mood this piece sets, helping me feel what this man feels and make the story more alive. However, the ending was totally unexplained and just happened, closing things up and all that tension built up to a sudden death out of nowhere, which was kind of jarring, I guess =/ Plus, I couldn't even tell that was a zombie until I read the tags for this story. This piece feels... unfinished. I recommend going back to the drawing board (so to speak) and hammering this thing out to a complerte piece rather than an excerpt. Good luck!

[humblelion]

i like the use of words ,but at the same time you did not tell what the story is all about
your reader should be ecited you arte telling them a story, remenber your reader are the one who does the constuctive criticism...over all you tried so i am giving you 51 percent

[zoolane]

I think story itself is about man woke up, to see person outside hes window,about to pull him out of window but only see person half face drag him?

[Joe Leon]

Your description of the zombie wasn't very thorough; when I first read that piece, I thought it was someone pressing one side of their face to the window. After that it was all confusion, for me at least. Try making it more apparent that it's a zombie, either by using details that can't be misinterpreted, OR by describing the immediate surroundings, all the more to give the reader a clue as to what's happening. It's good to make the reader have to think about what's been said in order to make sense of what's going on; those types of stories are generally more memorable. But you have to make sure that the reader will eventually figure out what happened.

A few sentence structure issues: (People don't normally comment on these in these forums, and rightly so, for the story itself matters more than grammar. But if someone doesn't point these out, then the person who made the mistakes will never learn about them. Sometimes poor phrasing of description or dialogue can ruin an otherwise sound story.)

- You switch from past tense to present tense halfway through the story. "...he still couldn't hear a single sound. His ears have the slight ring that only absolute silence brings." Make sure you keep to one tense. Usually, writer's will go with a past tense, though some use present tense when they want their story to have a fast-paced quality. (I've never heard of anyone using future-tense for an entire story.)

- Your analogy of his search for the sound is very good, comparing it's elusive nature to shadows when the light's turned on. But the next line, "...suddenly he grasped the shadow..." doesn't really work, though I can see what you're trying to do, which is to continue the analogy. In order to pull this off, you need to relate finding the "enigma" to the equivalent in the analogy. For example, using your earlier analogy of the strange sound as an enigma, "Suddenly, the man cracked the enigma; he knew what was different that morning." The man "grasping" the shadow doesn't fit, because one doesn't normally grasp shadows. Alternatively, you could just let the analogy end where it began, and simply state that the "man suddenly knew what was different that morning."

- "The floor was colder than usual he noted." In this sentence the reader doesn't know that what he's reading is a thought, as there's nothing to signify that it's different from the regular description. One way, which was employed to great effect by J.K. Rowling, is to italicize the thoughts. At the very least, separate usual from he with a comma, as that's the transition from his thoughts to narration.

- "drug" is not the right word here, dragged is.

Over all very imaginative, you've got a great start.