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This is the first draft of a short story I'm planning to expand into a novella. I know urban fantasy is a hugely crowded genre, but I'm hoping to try and break in. ----- I. Cherry Bomb is what I call her, and she's just thrown twin cartons of Luckies onto me desk. Must be me birthday. I lean back to consider her gift. Thoroughly, like. She crosses her arms, arches one dark eyebrow at yours truly. Her nails are painted black – except the middles, which she's coated in neon red. Tall and wiry is our Cherry, covered in cheap prison runes and backroom ink. Hair gathered back with metal spikes that look about as lethal as any bullet. I put me hands behind me head and meet her gaze. She flashes me a smile that'd reverse ice ages and drops into a crouch. Comes back up with a bloody huge cooler that she slams on me desk, then sweeps the top off like she's presenting me with me own soul. Why, it'd be rude as the royal navy not to look. So I have meself a peek. Bottles of stouts black as me heart bobbing in a sea of glittering ice. Lesser men, they'd weep at such beauty. Me? I reach in for a bottle, crack it open, and have meself a nice long pull. Now we're talking. “So,” says I, putting down to bottle to tear open one of the cartons, “what right bastard do you need turned into a crime scene?” That smile pulls her mouth right back up. She snatches the bottle off me desk and starts in on it herself. “Well,” she says with that throaty and smooth voice of hers, “I want you to find this rear end in a top hat, Angel. And I want you to tell me where he is, right down to the piece of sidewalk he's polluting.” “And then?” ”And then I put a nail into that goddamned wooden head of his.” Woman after me heart, is our Cherry. I got the first pack from the carton undone, so I light up with a beat to shite silver Zippo and hold out me other hand. She's wearing a blue work shirt with the sleeves up, and reaches into her breast pocket to produce a picture that she hands off. Digital and printed off, a bit grainy for the cause, but behold it I do all the same. Dapper young shite he is. Good clothes and good looks that'd land him on the back of some seedy magazine. Hands in his pockets, hat cocked to one side. Might as well have 'FUCKER' tattooed on his forehead and do everyone involved a favor. “Hell is he?” “Word from my students is he's a changeling, and there's a whole Lord of the Flies tribe. All of them hate iron and move faster than you did for that beer.” Cue me impressed whistle around that smoldering Lucky. I'm staring hard at the smooth, cocky face, imprinting it's every tiny perfection. Can feel me eyes getting wider, the corners of me mouth plucking up, showing more teeth than they should. Can almost smell the stink of him. Cherry slides to sit on me desk, looking at the picture with me. “Difference between him and the others, Angel? He's the only one brassy enough to gently caress with my Waywards.” Can't have that. I flick me lighter back to life and hold it beneath the paper until gobshite incarnate is going up in a flame that singes me fingers. “He's already ashes.” II. Now, despite what Cherry insists on calling me, I'm no angel and it's not me name. Me name is Alexander McCarr and it's right there on the door. No description of what I do, because if you've found me, you already know what that is. Onto another cigarette when I slip on me suit jacket and head outside. Quiet in this part of a dying block, just the distant rumble of a train and the buzzing of a broken light to keep me company. I take a drag and close me eyes. Nothing can hide from me – I hear everything from the whisper of tires to gentle crying to the pitter patter of a rat that's found supper. Feel the lines beating, connected to the great old heart of creation, and I pick apart at the most interesting threads. Mull it over for a bit before I open me eyes and start along this great shoddy sidewalk, bound for the merciless guts of me fair home. Can have all the tricks in the world, but nothing quite matches a pure scent on a hunt like this, and like any good hound, I know the choicest bits to dig one up. Five cigarettes later when I get there, standing in the shadow of a great gently caress-off skyscraper. Sharing this particular piece of urban hell happens to be a building with flashing neon lights and music that sets the pavement pounding, nestled right up against the 'scraper like a right nasty tumor. Sinclair's Electric Burlesque, flash the letters above. In we go, then. The doorman – a burly sod with a mean grimace and taller than I – almost puts an arm out to snag me beautiful self when I shove past him. Almost. Sees the wide set of me eyes and the smile that has too many teeth and wisely has his reservations. Good boyo. Inside, it's dark and loud. Wailing piano chords and growling drums. The crowd is thin at this time of day, and one the blue lit stage is a girl in lingerie and top hat, steadily sharpening a knife while she trades witticisms with the crowd. Pang of homesickness that gives me, but I shrug it off and keep right on for the stairs at the dingy back that wind upwards. Whiff of blood when I pass the dark VIP floor and it makes me pause. Close me eyes again, get carried away on the music from below and I can see just what happened in there, all the threads smashing together to form a memory like I was peeping at it through a hole in the wall. Newborn, he was, freshly burst into the night and wanting to impress his gormless friends. Not the one I'm looking for, but a cousin close enough to kiss. Gets too enthusiastic with the girl he charmed into giving herself over. Plays with her, bites off a bit more of that sweet nougat than he meant and well, well, well. I open me eyes. That smile of mine, it grows until I'm either a shark or the sodding Chesire Cat. Knew I picked the right loving place. Stink of angels all over that room. The club's resident EMTs, as it were, and none of them were happy with the events that transpired behind yonder door, not even a tiny wee bit. Right on up to the top level with me. The deco wooden doors give me pause when I push against them. Enough hexes and jinxes that keep out the nastier sorts, sending those delicious wee ripples of impending doom and destruction right through me arm and into me chest. Luckily, I'm the nastiest. I grab this fearsome spiked trail of yarn and yank it apart so hard the door shudders like a virgin being exposed. They swing open with naught but a polite twist after that, and I'd be rude to postpone the entry I'd so rightly earned. Sunlight beaming into a glorious office sat atop the ugly building. All wood and modern angles and so dreadfully dull I want to torch it before I have a gray beard from the sheer effort of standing there. Behind a massive desk that might well moonlight as a fortress is a smooth, genderless face. No hair atop, and from one angle it might be a supermodel, and from the other, another sodding supermodel. It smiles at me, sterile as the room around it. Oh, so that's how we're doing things, eh? The thing behind the desk is a Golem, pure as snow. Some supernatural doll sculpted from the finest clay and slapped with enough juice to power an entire war. Masterwork of craftsmanship, this one, and it tilts its head while I puzzle it together. I stare it right in the eye while I feel out around me. Nothing. The room has been scrubbed clean – no scents, no traces of the blocks that pound through the veins of every living thing. Even me presence will be a whisper by the time I'm one step out the door. “Please, Destroyer. Have a seat. You're making us nervous.” The voice is as smooth and neutral as its face. Rattling around in me head rather than coming from between its lips. So I sit, and kick me boots up on that posh desk. “Give me a reason I don't burn this wretch down around your cast iron balls.” “Ah,” comes the voice in me head again, “because you'll never meet us in the flesh, and you're the curious sort, Destroyer. Are you afraid to use your real voice?” I shan't respond to such outrage. The Golem gives me a once over and then steeples its fingers. A sly smile plays at that perfect mouth. “I must admit, we're surprised as anyone you've turned up. You've hidden yourself so thoroughly that even the All Mother thinks you lost. Tit for tat, what do you hide from?” “Stupid loving questions, mostly.” The perfectly shaped eyes regard me. I keep the shark grin aimed right at it. “A favor to us then, Destroyer. We will call, and you will answer. No matter the hour and no matter the date, run you shall to us and uphold your end of the bargain.” I feel meself bristling. Being hired muscle isn't an alien thing, but the thee and thou's grate on me nerves something fierce. Makes them feel like they're being jabbed by wee, vicious hay forks. Usually when I feel like that, I shoot something until it stops moving. Today, though, I just kick that fancy desk to splinters and stand to loom over this perfect pecker as it laments the greatest loss it'll ever know. “Aye, I'll let you tug on me strings once. But if the next words out of your mouth aren't sending me away from this dive, I'll turn you back into clay. I know a lovely woman that wouldn't mind a pretty vase.” “What you seek is no longer here. It has been whisked away, hidden by kin in a place it will do no harm. Their balance is delicate in this sad, modern world, and trouble it was unto them until that moment.” III. Now, even though it raised me hackles in such a horrorshow fashion, you may be wondering why I put meself into such a debt. Curiosity killed the bloody mick would be me reply. Whoever Sinclair might be, they run a cozy joint. And creating that Golem, wiping their slate clean, wrangling angels for personal medicine men, and keeping off me drunken radar all the while does make a fucker I'd dearly love to meet. And then maybe yank their fingernails out. It's dark by the time I'm back in me section of chaos and beneath the lights are me people. The lost, the broken, the cast away. I love them in a way that's too soppy for words, and woe upon any bastard that means them danger. I slip through them like the shadow of a ghost until I reach the front of an old school. Cherry's Wayward school, to be exact. See – they aren't actually her students. Just what she calls them. Ones like her that don't feel comfortable with that mean old body they've been born into, ones that've been cast out from home and hearth because they happen to find love in those what share their bits, and anything between the two. She takes them in off the streets, sits them down, and gives them a way out of the mess they've found themselves in. Protective bunch they are. Heard about what's been trying to prey on them and the oldest have come outside to stand guard with nail guns. Bless 'em. They give me the eye when I go around back, but don't do much to stop me. Know Cherry and I are tight, like, and some of them might even trust me. I take the fire escape up to Cherry's level and knock against the window while I perch on the railing like a gargoyle. Cherry's always a vision. Just a massively baggy red shirt and her wet, dark hair. Fresh from a shower and she takes a seat on the sill after she throws up the window. “You're a mean old hound..” “Don't be celebrating just yet, love.” I fill her in. Her face takes on a certain hard look as me tale winds on and she lights a cigarette to fight the sudden shaking in her shoulders. Exhales long and low, squinting off into the street lights and the distant silhouettes of her patrolling Waywards. “How do we find him?” “That's the fucker, innit? Fret not, for your hound has the scent of those dreary kin of his.” She gives a weak smile around her cigarette. We fall into silence then and I follow her gaze. Those wee Waywards down there are as much me people as they are hers, and I feel a certain burning in me heart at the thought someone has been preying here. Somewhere even fools fear the tread of the earth. It's her what breaks the silence, her voice quiet and a little distant. “I ever tell you about my first time, Angel?” “Confession is good for the soul. Especially to one of me holy order.” She laughs at that, lets her head drop back against the window. “Only ten years old, you know? I had a crush on this boy – he was beautiful. Could swing a bat harder than a major leaguer and got his kicks studying card tricks. But I was just a kid. I'd never tell him. I knew I was really a girl but him and me have the same thing between our legs and what am I gonna say? No one talks about that poo poo, and who was I gonna ask for advice? And how is he gonna react? No one told me it was normal to feel that, that love doesn't care about that petty poo poo, that it's OK to feel it. So I just hid the feeling away and stayed his friend. But the boy was a born victim. Trouble had his number and it was always drunk dialing.” Another beat of silence while she thinks and I let it pass. Her story, her words, and her thoughts. I'm just scenery. “These kids, older than us, we thought they were so cool and so dangerous. They treated us like garbage. Then the leader, he gets a bright idea. Have this baseball star rob a store for them. He's a minor, an athlete. It'll never stick on him, and they'll have the money before he's in cuffs. They start pressuring him. Waving a gun around. And I knew my boy was gonna cave – all it was gonna take was time.” Sometime during her story, she'd crawled out of the window to stand on the escape. Leaning on it near me, her smoke dangling between her lips. “I stopped it. Followed this motherfucker after school. He never saw me. With my stupid neon backpack and too big Doc Martens and he never even looked around. He was standing outside a stoop, talking to these greasy assholes he called friends. I ducked into an alley and took this old plastic pipe someone threw out. I started writing all these nonsense words on it with a marker that smelled like grapes. Then I took all the anger at him, all the protection I wanted to spread over my boy, and I just felt it. Pointed my magic pipe at the sky and felt every tiny bit of it. Wanted it all to come down right on his puny head.” She closes her eyes and tenses her shoulders. Has another drag before she relaxes them. “The pipe got so hot it burned me. Melted right in my hands. Then there was screaming. Not me, I didn't weep a single drat tear. It was a circus across the street, though. Turns out rear end in a top hat just evaporated into guts and gore and that's all that was left of him. Know what I did, Angel?” “Nary a clue.” “I smiled. I smiled and I thought, 'no, rear end in a top hat. Not my boy. Not ever my boy. No, you don't.'” She passes me her cigarette when she opens her eyes. I have a drag, still perched as I am. Tastes like her namesake – sweet lip gloss and the faint smolder of gunpowder. I drag again and I say to her, “Get your boots. We've a date.” IV. And here we are, Cherry and I, cruising silently in the beat to shite Torino I've had since the first pope. It was black once, now it's just fade and rust. Cherry's all in black. Jeans and boots and a nifty little jacket that she produces a spike from to clean her nails with. Nasty piece of work, her spike. Sharpened ice pick, gaffer's tape wrapped around the handle so she's got a nice and solid grip for the ultra violence. Don't envy our runner. It's best Cherry not see me eyes, so I've wisely put on the sunglasses I keep for just such an occasion. I've got the scent in me head and it does... shall we say, funny things to the mask I work so hard to maintain. Drawing us closer, while I can feel every beat of his heart and thrum of desire like he was me very own body. Trendy clubs that pound music that makes you feel like machines have taken over, convenience stores for that nasty hangover, and all within walking distance of public transport that smells like a thousand urinals. He's in a group standing outside of a club, laughing and pushing at his bloody phone. The group is as flawless as a set diamond; perfect smiles, skirts that hang just right and pants so sharp you could cut paper, eyes shrewd and clear. Only way you'd ever notice something was off if you got close enough. Their fingers are all the exact same length. Long and delicate, but stronger than a crocodile's jaws. Coast to a stop on the opposite side of the street and I'm out and moving. Cherry makes a startled sound behind me, then scrambles after me. They can sense me coming. They've all tensed up, looking like rabbits who've realized there's a rabid dog just behind the next tree. They're wise to be loving scared. I wade into them. Grab me particular rabbit by the back of his neck before he can scream and slam a fist into his perfect face. Bones crunch, he goes limp and must be surprised to find himself over me shoulder. I'm already turning back when there's a scream so loud it cracks like a shot and everyone not in that posh little group suddenly has blood running from their ears. Including Cherry, and it stains the white silk mask she's pulled over her face. But her eyes are shining, bright as comets. Her spike is buried to the hilt in the shoulder of this wee scamp that was about to jinx me through a bloody wall. See, these changelings can touch iron all they want. But, you break the skin, get into them? It's a right thriller to see. He's screaming sodding murder and mayhem when I shove past, and Cherry gives her spike a neat twist before yanking it out and showing it to the rest of the gaggle. They stand motionless as statues, riveted to their phones. Trembling. Cherry and I are back across the street, quick and silent as we came. Runner goes in the trunk and then we're well off before a siren can even get the idea of blaring V. Boyo finds himself laid out on a cold slab of concrete dock when he comes swimming back up. Most of the bones in his face have healed in this short time, and I watch him give his jaw a little move and take a vicious pride in the grimace that follows. His troubles are only just beginning, because Cherry comes to loom over him. She's a frightful, vengeful ghost beneath her white mask, looming over him with the spike. He can sense me back in the shadows, and the woe he was preparing at the tip of his tongue suddenly goes straight back down his throat. His panicked eyes go between me and Cherry. She drops into a crouch over his chest and plasters her hand right over his mouth, her spike tight against his temple. “You're gonna sing me a song, pretty bird. Wanna know what about?” He nods. All he can do, really. “You're gonna sing about your cousin. Sing his life story, right up to what spider hole he scuttled into.” She releases his mouth and he has a steep drink of the air before he starts in. Something has changed in his eyes; a burning hatred for me dear Cherry that threatens to make him do something oh so careless. “Go gently caress yourself, witch. Family matters stay indoors.” Cherry is a terror with that spike. Knows just where to drive it. Another one of those screams pierces the air, echoing out over the silent river. No one around for miles to notice the fresh blood running from Cherry's ears. “You got a tune, song bird. All I have to do is wind it up.” It takes a good long while before he finally relents. Cherry got wise after that first bleat and gave us a little spell that filters the warbling. And so it goes. Until he finally just lets out the cry of a child not getting his way and looks up at her. “He's in the loving castle, all right? The loving castle! Same place we buried those loving things he -” And as quick as that, there's his last defiant mistake. A calm sweeps over him and his jaw doesn't snap closed, but just hangs open when the full weight of Cherry's gaze smashes into his eyes. “scuse me?” Then she lays into him with the spike. Between his ribs, so he'll feel every burning inch. “Things? They were people! Same as me, you pathetic worm!” She punctuates every stroke with a new an inventive swear that'd make even me old salt of a mother blush to the roots of her hair. “They had names. A family that loved them. And you fucks – you haughty, good for nothing fucks think you can just swindle and feed. They should have loving kept you! Got no loving business walking around where you can get at anyone! Especially. Not. My. loving. Waywards!” He's well and gone at the end of that outburst, leaking his too pale blood all over Cherry and the concrete. I go to get her off him. She doesn't fight, just goes limp when I reel her back by the arms. Light as a feather to me either way, and I guide her back to the car. She's vibrating so hard she might shake apart, but come along she does. We don't linger. VI. What are modern day castles if not bloody jails? Glorified dungeons where they lord over the slaves. Takes a long bit of driving to bend me mind the right direction to figure it, but I do well enough. Cherry has lapsed into a fitful sleep when I finally do, curled up in the seat with her arms around that bloody spike. There's more than a few abandoned prisons in this sprawl, places cleared out when the obscene super max opened. Modern day castles, right under me nose. And lucky sod I am, I've got the tribe's scent firm in me head. So that's where we've come to, out in the middle of nowhere. The ruthless and posh bastards patrolling the walls have yet to notice us. From the looks of them, you'd assume they couldn't use the guns they sling around, but you'd make a mighty fatal mistake in doing so. I don't say anything when Cherry starts herself awake, blinking behind her mask. I point. She follows me finger and her eyes go steely. She sits up, alert and beautiful. Her dark hair falls against the sides of the mask and the blood has dried into fine streaks of warpaint. It's been well enough that the hornets are so very violently shaken up. They know a stranger shall come knocking, and they've brought the hardware for a firm greeting. Cherry is a lot of things, but human is tribal leader among them, and those nasty bits would chew her up before she even raised a proper cuss. Granted, she doesn't know about me and me ways, so it's with a certain sense of alarm that she receives me plan when we put our heads together. There's a lot of promising I'll come out with everything where it ought be and oaths on dead mothers I never had that I'll see another rooster bringing up mean father Sol. All said and done, I end up alone in the car while Cherry sneaks off out of the cold sunshine. I light meself a cigarette, listen to the birds chirp for a bit. Put me hands on the wheel and read the runes and sigils I've tattooed across them and all up me arms. Then I start her and slam down on the gas. Ramming speed. Sparks fly and the Torino smashes through the electrified chain link gates. I'm grinning the entire way. The pretties up yonder don't waste any time. There's a thousand bullets slamming into the car and me the whole way through. Christ, that loving smarts fierce. See, you can shoot me. You can stab me. You can bloody well burn me alive. I'll feel every second of it, but things like me, you just can't keep us in the dirt. So, in this great deal of pain that I'm currently in, you'd expect blood everywhere. But there's only shards of ice, holding me skin closed and knitting me innards back together. The pain gives me something to focus on. And the hex that I sling through gritted teeth sends heads all along the watchtower popping. Then I'm out of the car, moving across the dusty yard and hauling me beaten carcass up the wall by sheer force. Grab one of the bastards and drag him down through the barbed wire, then rip his throat with me teeth while he thrashes and fizzes. Take his gun on the way over – some shite pistol, all plastic and curves – and pump a round into two foolish enough to think they could help the first. Closing in from both sides now, so I wing it towards the cover of the watchtower they'll have to cross through. Bullets ring against the concrete once I'm inside and I feel the changes. Know by instinct that me eyes have gone all inky and black, perilous depths and all that sod. The grin won't go and I feel the ice trying to stitch one side of me mouth back together. Me mind goes sleepwalking while I'm putting the world to rights. There's a lot of ripping and tearing. I come through the darkness in me head and some poor whelp’s heart would be in me hand. I sink, then come up again through all the static and end up kicking another bastard through the nasty wire. When the smoke clears and I can steer meself through the carnage I've wrought, I focus on the doors. More inside. I can smell them. The jinxes and curses that've been slung at me set the tattoos throbbing and burning and glowing as they soak up all that energy. Know Cherry's inside. Can smell her, too. And sense the iron strong, focused needle of the magic she weaves rocking back and forth through the fabric. That's me girl. But, inside, word has spread about what they're facing down. And they've summoned something right awful to put me down to earth. I toss the useless meat that was me last victim at those locked doors, then follow it down. Land crouched and put me head down. Waiting. VII. Don't have to wait long. The doors slide open and out comes what looks like a man put together all wrong. His limbs strike and slide at odd, misshapen angles. Horrible grinding noises. The stink of otherness about him, from the howling darkness from beyond creation. Now they bloody well have me attention. Right now, I'm slow and everything moving is blaring a throbbing soundtrack of pain. I'll have to play this one. So I stand and get a good look as he starts circling me in that smooth, janky gait. Almost reminds me of the way a spider moves, this bastard. He has naught for protection but a piece of rebar, branded with things I'll never take the time to figure. First thing is to learn your enemy. So, I get in close and let him have a whack with that wee bit of rebar he's so deadly fond of. I could say it hurts. I could say that, but I shan't, because it comes nowhere near what shoots through me head when he lays in. So bad that me vision narrows and I can't feel anything. Not the pulsing beat of creation, not the mayhem and despair I'd just rained down, nothing. All there was was a black bleak wave of absolute poo poo. I feel meself lifting, and find to me surprise that I'm well into the thick yard wall hard enough to crack it. It takes a real effort to stand after such abuse, but stand I do, we face each other across the dirt. I spit on that dirt and then he's rushing, all jangly limbs and a calm, almost content smile on his face. First off, I have to get him to drop that sodding pain stick. So it's a storm I call forth, a fury of swirling, icy blades. But his arm, it bends in way no arm should and the razors sail off into the great distance. Probably flipping me the bird as they go. Then, I get another whack across the noggin. Shite. Moments like this, I forget me mask. In that darkness, what I truly am stirs, and I don't care if it leaves a print the size of a megaton across every bleeding radar on God's green loving Earth, nobody hurts me like that and I'll be proper hosed if let this rear end in a top hat put even a single odd finger on Cherry. So I let that pain come. I crumple to the ground and then I let out me wings, and with them, the true things that turn me cranks. Me mind has gone again. I retreat and have a bit of peace before I surface for another blow with that sodding stick. Go away, come back, and me teeth are locked onto this thing's wrist, chewing through. Intent to tear until I have his hand in me mouth like a sodding dog. Know I've gone feral and I can feel me features changing. Becoming a smooth mask. No holes, no bumps, just smooth ice and me staring eyes. Gone again. Come back and I've somehow gotten his arm off without me teeth. It's on the ground between us. But he slugs with something from that wicked tongue of that sends feathers flying in a frenzy and then I'm beaten into another senseless pit. I consider staying this time. To me chagrin, I never do just stay, and when I open me eyes I have me fingers buried to the knuckles in his skull. His good hand is wailing me with that stick and I'm just holding on like I'm drowning, me fingers sinking deeper. Searching for his eyes. I go down into blackness again and all I hear is a distant pop, then another solid thump of that stick slamming against me delicate sort. VIII. I'm content to stay here until I feel a presence over me, lording like the duke of all the land. I've a grudge when I open me eyes. Cherry. Covered in too pale blood, with small scratches in the fabric of her mask. Can tell by her expression that I'm mostly normal again, but she's never seen the ice. She tilts her head, eyeballing me, then moves out off sight. Feel her hands at me wrists, dragging me towards the ruins of me once great car. As we go, I spy the sack of bones I've left, and I manage to work up a proper spit at them while I'm dragged past. Tosser. Cherry helps me up, props me against the bumper. I look away when she slides a cigarette between me lips, inhale when she lights it. Don't want to watch her studying me. “Know what I think, Angel?” I don't respond. “I think as much as you hem and haw, you really are an angel. Never pegged exactly what you were, boy. Now? I think you're a mean guardian that's wandered into this world, and you've picked yourself some folk not a single other soul is watching over.” That distant hill is mighty loving interesting, innit? She traces her finger across me ruined cheek and the ice that holds it closed, then walks to the driver's door. She pauses. “I saw your wings, Angel. They were beautiful.” Then she's in, and amazingly the old Torino starts. Rattles like a snake, but start she does, and idles for a few seconds until I wave me hand. Stand up straight when the car lurches back. Another few seconds pass before it pulls out and roars away. Just me, a cigarette, and father Sol.
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Jan 9, 2016 01:24
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 04:05 |
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Minor grammar errors first:quote:and one the blue lit stage Should be "on" instead of "one," I believe. Chapter II. quote:She tilts her head, eyeballing me, then moves out off sight. Should be "of" rather than "off". More meaty stuff: Definitely enjoyed the ride. Some parts of it took a bit of figuring to fit together what's going on. That's a bit more easily digestible in a novella/novel, but a bit harder with a short story- I still don't feel I understand the world terribly well at the end. That issue will probably be resolved if you do expand it. I enjoyed the writing, and the characterization was excellent. I tend to punctuate my accents a bit more than you do- at times they feel spot on, but at a few spots I felt they could do with a bit more to fit the theme you were going for. At the beginning I thought Angel might be a pirate based on his speech pattern (not that that's necessarily a bad thing). I'm not super familiar with Shadowrun, but the world felt so reminiscent of it that I wondered if this was a fanfic at one point, not helped by the fact that one of your characters is named the same as a not entirely dissimilar character from Shadowrun Returns (http://shadowrun.gamepedia.com/Cherry_Bomb). As far as the writing and story itself goes, I have very little to criticize. I enjoyed it all the way through and it held my interest nicely. It was very fast-paced, which is great for a short story and something I have considerable trouble with myself. Look forward to hearing more.
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Feb 21, 2016 19:20
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