Subject #4096

[poopskin]

Now, i occasionally think up short stories, but normally i don't post them or put them on paper because i think people won't like them. As a experiment, i'm posting a story i'm working on and depending on how you guys like it i'll continue it.

 

Subject #4096

(Or: To the gates of madness and back)

 

Chapter 1. 1000 Years’ Incarceration

 

The night following my escape.

The only thing I can remember is some words.

 

“BEG FOR FORGIVENESS”

 

But…To whom? To whom to beg for forgiveness? In the weeks following my escape from the deepest nether worlds of hell, that was all I could say. I just barely remember clawing at the doors of a remote hotel whimpering “Beg…beg for forgiveness…” in my Catatonic state.The only image that those words brought to mind was a vast desert, in another time, in another place. The desert had a colossal tower, with a single eye-like searchlight, piercing in its loneliness. The sun was bloated and red, and it was obvious that it was not much longer for this world. For 1000 years I wandered that desert, that horrid tower, that oddly nightmarish tower, off in the horizon all the way, staring into my soul and making it’s judgment. Occasionally I would hit a spring or Oasis, only for the lake to be filled with bloated, rotten corpses, the fruit to be filled with maggots, and the air was filled with overpowering stench of death. That, it seems, was the monster keeping me there’s idea of a sick joke. I would fade in and out of consciousness, and yet I never really stopped moving. After 1000 years that blasted tower was out of sight, and the burden of its gaze, heavy enough to keep me anchored in that deserted hell lifted. The world around me Distorted and twisted, and I was back in the world I had known. From there on, it was all a blur, aside from the occasional memory flittering back one moment, then being gone the next. Also, at certain places I encountered bouts of Déjà vu, I felt a naggling feeling like I had been there before, in some past life. I felt (and still feel) as if I had not completely escaped the monster that was the catalyst of my incarceration…And in truth, I hadn’t. in my nightmares, I was still incarcerated in that hellscape, but something seemed different. There was another tower, and there was another prisoner. I could not see this mysterious other, and yet I could tell someone was there…

 

[saltinespike]

The only thing I can really take in on this piece is that I'm noticing you like to tell your story in clichés. It's not original. It seems you're taking pieces of other stories you've heard and are patching them together in this. Lost in the desert for 1,000 years; not original. A tower with an eye that can see into your soul; not original. A man who's escaped who has trouble remembering his past; not original. See where I'm going with this? Instead of drawing influences from well-known movies and books, try cracking out an original piece that you randomly thought up, instead of "Jason Bourne meets Clint Eastwood to battle the tower from Lord of the Rings".

[poopskin]

OK. Will do.

Heck, i've never even READ the dark tower!

(it's not so much his past as a few days.)

Edited April 8, 2009 by poopskin

[saltinespike]

The Dark Tower? I don't even know what that is, nor did I mention it.

[poopskin]

Eh? oh. You didn't? i must be going blind or something. i know you mentioned a tower. i suppose just skimming doesn't work, even though i got the criticism (need to be more original, despite the fact that just about everything's been done as far as i know).

[Rhoda]

Eh? oh. You didn't? i must be going blind or something. i know you mentioned a tower. i suppose just skimming doesn't work...

And that is the main thing here. It wouldn't be fair or decent to skim through your work if you had asked me or anyone else to give feedback. The same goes for other work here. I suppose it's a bit of give and take; the more you read, the more you say.

[poopskin]

Keeping that in mind. Thanks for the feedback!