The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
SSC2 - The Dark Place
You can’t catch me, I’m like the wind. You’ll see the disturbance I leave in my wake but I brush past rippling blades of grass and billowing curtains without so much as casting a shadow. My victims, carefully selected, choice cuts of prime meat; rump, leg and breast. I spill blood with my pendulous blades and feast upon the meal I have prepared myself, often raw. Most flesh can be eaten but skin is hard to digest, I use an old brown-handled pairing knife to remove the top layers of skin from a meal before I eat her. The best bits are the thighs, buttocks, upper arms and breasts, if you cook them just right they are very tender and juicy and taste like spit-roasted pork. There is little meat on the hands, feet or neck so I often leave these bits for the rats.
I usually make a victim last about a week before choosing a new one; my technique is flawless. I lure the maidens up to the dark place with promise of fine wine and grapes, it helps if they’re drunk but I prefer them sober, to see the glint of fear in their eyes before cutting deep into them. Watching the blood spurt out of their mouth, over their sweet little lips and dripping elegantly from their chin onto their cleavage. The priceless expression on their pretty little face, knowing they’ve made a fatal error. The way their lips try to ask me “why?” as life drains from their body has become one of my many vices. But they’ll never catch me, nobody knows about the dark place, not nobody.
Children in the village talk about it, but it’s just childish folklore, the adults know that. They outgrow the tale like the tooth fairy and forget about the stories of the dark place. Rumours have it that I’m the spirit of a worker of the old mill who hated females and was killed in an accident at the mill and exists, embittered, killing young women for sport. They’re half right, I hate women, they’re an inferior species – but I am very much alive, blood still pulses, cold, through my veins. Few know the location of the old mill any more and those who do don’t dare stray here any more. This is my dark place, not theirs.
There are three levels inside the grey-stone building, the storage floor at the bottom – this is littered with filthy rotting bodies and swarming with black rats spreading their disease. The rats are like the, they both spread their disease to the world – the rats spread the plague, the women spread their filthy lust; they are one and the same. The second floor has my preparation table, coated with a film of dried blood, some of which has splattered onto the cold wall behind it. There is my tool rack holding all of my equipment, my bone saw, brown-handled pairing knife, meat hooks, chest cavity expander, gall bladder plucker, intestine unraveller, bone cutters, a tongue severer and most precious of all the long curved silver handled blade I use for sliding through a victims diaphragm and up into their lung cavity until their breathing fluctuates, falters and halts.
The third level of my shadowy hideaway is where I live and work. It is a simple existence with only a bed and a loom and few other necessities to my name. I embroider patchworks I weave on my loom using natural dyes. There’s not a lot of cloth here in the country so I have to improvise. After carefully removing the skin from a meal with my brown-handled pairing knife I can carefully stitch the strips of skin back together and make it into a beautiful picture. I cart these down to the village to sell to the rich townsfolk and buy myself more tools of my trade with the profits. I’ve got my eye set on a small round blade they use for artificially birthing cattle, I’ll have some fun with that.
The rumours will carry on, the children will tell their fanciful stories to disbelieving adults and people will gossip at the disappearance of a young woman. But nobody investigates, nobody comes to my dark place to investigate. The evidence is here for them, rotting putridly, slowly expiring. They’ll never catch me, I’m like the wind.
You can’t catch me, I’m like the wind. You’ll see the disturbance I leave in my wake but I brush past rippling blades of grass and billowing curtains without so much as casting a shadow. My victims, carefully selected, choice cuts of prime meat; rump, leg and breast. I spill blood with my pendulous blades and feast upon the meal I have prepared myself, often raw. Most flesh can be eaten but skin is hard to digest, I use an old brown-handled pairing knife to remove the top layers of skin from a meal before I eat her. The best bits are the thighs, buttocks, upper arms and breasts, if you cook them just right they are very tender and juicy and taste like spit-roasted pork. There is little meat on the hands, feet or neck so I often leave these bits for the rats.
I usually make a victim last about a week before choosing a new one; my technique is flawless. I lure the maidens up to the dark place with promise of fine wine and grapes, it helps if they’re drunk but I prefer them sober, to see the glint of fear in their eyes before cutting deep into them. Watching the blood spurt out of their mouth, over their sweet little lips and dripping elegantly from their chin onto their cleavage. The priceless expression on their pretty little face, knowing they’ve made a fatal error. The way their lips try to ask me “why?” as life drains from their body has become one of my many vices. But they’ll never catch me, nobody knows about the dark place, not nobody.
Children in the village talk about it, but it’s just childish folklore, the adults know that. They outgrow the tale like the tooth fairy and forget about the stories of the dark place. Rumours have it that I’m the spirit of a worker of the old mill who hated females and was killed in an accident at the mill and exists, embittered, killing young women for sport. They’re half right, I hate women, they’re an inferior species – but I am very much alive, blood still pulses, cold, through my veins. Few know the location of the old mill any more and those who do don’t dare stray here any more. This is my dark place, not theirs.
There are three levels inside the grey-stone building, the storage floor at the bottom – this is littered with filthy rotting bodies and swarming with black rats spreading their disease. The rats are like the, they both spread their disease to the world – the rats spread the plague, the women spread their filthy lust; they are one and the same. The second floor has my preparation table, coated with a film of dried blood, some of which has splattered onto the cold wall behind it. There is my tool rack holding all of my equipment, my bone saw, brown-handled pairing knife, meat hooks, chest cavity expander, gall bladder plucker, intestine unraveller, bone cutters, a tongue severer and most precious of all the long curved silver handled blade I use for sliding through a victims diaphragm and up into their lung cavity until their breathing fluctuates, falters and halts.
The third level of my shadowy hideaway is where I live and work. It is a simple existence with only a bed and a loom and few other necessities to my name. I embroider patchworks I weave on my loom using natural dyes. There’s not a lot of cloth here in the country so I have to improvise. After carefully removing the skin from a meal with my brown-handled pairing knife I can carefully stitch the strips of skin back together and make it into a beautiful picture. I cart these down to the village to sell to the rich townsfolk and buy myself more tools of my trade with the profits. I’ve got my eye set on a small round blade they use for artificially birthing cattle, I’ll have some fun with that.
The rumours will carry on, the children will tell their fanciful stories to disbelieving adults and people will gossip at the disappearance of a young woman. But nobody investigates, nobody comes to my dark place to investigate. The evidence is here for them, rotting putridly, slowly expiring. They’ll never catch me, I’m like the wind.
Page:
Meka Dragon wrote:
> There were a few pieces that jarred a little, end of the second
> paragraph - "not nobody" - that I felt didn't fit.
Old English, I was trying to set this in the past without having to specifically say "100 years ago in a small town..." - Theres a few other oldish language features if you look for them.
> I felt it could have been split up a little, and perhaps expanded upon.
You're probably right there but I wanted to keep within the word limit.
> missing word, I believe. "The rats are like the," like the
> what?
*them - typo, sorry.
Also, I like the way
> that the opening and closing lines are similar, it gives it a
> completeness.
I'm tending to do that quite a bit lately, I like it too.
> There were a few pieces that jarred a little, end of the second
> paragraph - "not nobody" - that I felt didn't fit.
Old English, I was trying to set this in the past without having to specifically say "100 years ago in a small town..." - Theres a few other oldish language features if you look for them.
> I felt it could have been split up a little, and perhaps expanded upon.
You're probably right there but I wanted to keep within the word limit.
> missing word, I believe. "The rats are like the," like the
> what?
*them - typo, sorry.
Also, I like the way
> that the opening and closing lines are similar, it gives it a
> completeness.
I'm tending to do that quite a bit lately, I like it too.
A strong opening line, and the following paragraphs expands upon this, and pulls us into this sick but intersting characters world.
There were a few pieces that jarred a little, end of the second paragraph - "not nobody" - that I felt didn't fit. The sentence that starts with the word 'Rumours' is a little clumsy - there's plenty of information in there, and I felt it could have been split up a little, and perhaps expanded upon. Also, there was a missing word, I believe. "The rats are like the," like the what?
All in all, an excellent glimpse into it's world, thta leaves us with plenty of questions - but not frustratingly so. Also, I like the way that the opening and closing lines are similar, it gives it a completeness.
There were a few pieces that jarred a little, end of the second paragraph - "not nobody" - that I felt didn't fit. The sentence that starts with the word 'Rumours' is a little clumsy - there's plenty of information in there, and I felt it could have been split up a little, and perhaps expanded upon. Also, there was a missing word, I believe. "The rats are like the," like the what?
All in all, an excellent glimpse into it's world, thta leaves us with plenty of questions - but not frustratingly so. Also, I like the way that the opening and closing lines are similar, it gives it a completeness.
Paradox: wrote:
> Cyclone wrote:
> Sorry, I didn't really like that. No offence - but it seemed a bit
> overly-descriptive in places, and also, very similar to your other
> work, as in almost too similar........ but each to their own!
>
> The plan was to be over-descriptive for dramatic effect. If I
> wanted it linear I could have written "I'm a nasty person who
> eats women and lives in a mill". Putting meat on the bones of a
> story is what makes it interesting. I suppose my writing is to an
> aquired taste.
Well of course description is needed, but sometimes (and not neccessarily in this case) over-describing stuff ruins what is otherwise good work. I myself often over describe things and then tone them down a little - often lack of description can be just as effective as a lot. But of course, it depends on intention. All I say is that personally I felt it twas, but you obviously didn't, so all's fine.
> Cyclone wrote:
> Sorry, I didn't really like that. No offence - but it seemed a bit
> overly-descriptive in places, and also, very similar to your other
> work, as in almost too similar........ but each to their own!
>
> The plan was to be over-descriptive for dramatic effect. If I
> wanted it linear I could have written "I'm a nasty person who
> eats women and lives in a mill". Putting meat on the bones of a
> story is what makes it interesting. I suppose my writing is to an
> aquired taste.
Well of course description is needed, but sometimes (and not neccessarily in this case) over-describing stuff ruins what is otherwise good work. I myself often over describe things and then tone them down a little - often lack of description can be just as effective as a lot. But of course, it depends on intention. All I say is that personally I felt it twas, but you obviously didn't, so all's fine.
:-S
Made me cringe!
Descriptive writing doesn't get any better compliments than that.
Although if there was to be a criticism then I'd say that this called the "Short Story Competition", not the "Short Description Competition", but hey we're not literalists round here... :-P
well, not outside the religious occult! ;-)
Made me cringe!
Descriptive writing doesn't get any better compliments than that.
Although if there was to be a criticism then I'd say that this called the "Short Story Competition", not the "Short Description Competition", but hey we're not literalists round here... :-P
well, not outside the religious occult! ;-)
T'was very good, I was wondering how the mill was going to be included, and at one point I didn't think it was all going to string together but it did, and very well too. I think you're likely to win this competition.
Cyclone wrote:
> Sorry, I didn't really like that. No offence - but it seemed a bit
> overly-descriptive in places, and also, very similar to your other
> work, as in almost too similar........ but each to their own!
The plan was to be over-descriptive for dramatic effect. If I wanted it linear I could have written "I'm a nasty person who eats women and lives in a mill". Putting meat on the bones of a story is what makes it interesting. I suppose my writing is to an aquired taste.
> Sorry, I didn't really like that. No offence - but it seemed a bit
> overly-descriptive in places, and also, very similar to your other
> work, as in almost too similar........ but each to their own!
The plan was to be over-descriptive for dramatic effect. If I wanted it linear I could have written "I'm a nasty person who eats women and lives in a mill". Putting meat on the bones of a story is what makes it interesting. I suppose my writing is to an aquired taste.
Sorry, I didn't really like that. No offence - but it seemed a bit overly-descriptive in places, and also, very similar to your other work, as in almost too similar........ but each to their own!
Ineedsleep wrote:
> Blogdrells!
Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't that a cartoon witch?
> Blogdrells!
Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't that a cartoon witch?
Black Glove wrote:
> O-o-o-o! YOU MANIAC!
> Ah, an encapsulation in words/swords of my perfect existence... ahem.
Guess who I had in mind for the protagonist all along?
... thats right... El Robin.
> O-o-o-o! YOU MANIAC!
> Ah, an encapsulation in words/swords of my perfect existence... ahem.
Guess who I had in mind for the protagonist all along?
... thats right... El Robin.
I am really running out of things to say for these, save for "I liked it". Thought you conveyed the bitterness for women and life in general quite well.
Page: