r/FictionWriting • • 5h ago

Discussion My book's true theme just revealed itself

8 Upvotes

These past few months I've been working on something under the misapprehension that the theme was one thing, but after an extremely productive writing session it's hit me that it's actually something completely different, and I couldn't be more excited!

I barely need to change a thing, I've somehow been writing about it the whole time without realising, and now a thread has appeared that ties everything together with weight and meaning that I was struggling to reach before. It was taking a lot of effort to work my original theme into certain parts of my story and I was worrying that something was wrong, but this solves so much, and gives my story the momentum it was missing beforehand.

This is the first time this has happened to me as a writer, and it made me wonder if anybody else has experienced this?


r/FictionWriting • • 2h ago

Happy Birthday Bobby

2 Upvotes

 

It was a pretty nice day. November in Los Angeles can be quite pleasant. I talked to my friend Mike back in Chicago. We were on the track team together in High School. He says he’s freezing his nuts off. I told him that my door was always open. He said there are too many homeless drug addicts and that he wouldn’t feel safe. I told him that was all media hype, and then he started in on illegal aliens. I got off the phone with him and realized he hadn’t changed much in 25 years.

I stopped in at the convenience store near my house to pick up a couple of Hostess cupcakes. Those things are disgusting. I’m surprised they still make them. I can’t believe I used to eat them. Me and Bobby used to celebrate our birthdays by eating them. I was November fourteenth; he was the fifteenth. Bobby was my adopted younger brother. He had Downs Syndrome.

 I was really indifferent when he first came to live with us. My mom and dad were peace corp. activist types. They weren’t hippies and they weren’t church people, they were just good people. We lived in an affluent suburb of Chicago. While the neighbors always had the latest cars my dad would drive his Volkswagen van until the wheels fell off. Literally, he was driving on the Eisenhower Expressway and the tie rod snapped, the front right wheel rolled onto the shoulder, followed by my dad. No one was hurt and soon after he bought a new used station wagon. My parents weren’t cheap. They were frugal. As a matter of fact, they were generous, giving people. My dad inherited some family money, and we never went without. They were ‘paying it forward’ before that was a thing.

They decided to open their hearts to Bobby. He was fourteen when he came to live with us. I was seventeen and the star of the track team. I was always polite to Bobby. Even though my mom was always “Tell your brother this, “or “Show your brother that,” I couldn’t wrap my head around the whole ‘brother’ thing. But as I said, I would always politely comply. But Bobby, he was so excited to call me brother. He’d grin from ear to ear whenever I gave him any attention. He was so loving, and I was such a jerk. Not that I treated him badly, it’s just that I didn’t care.

 I was pretty busy my senior year, keeping up my grades, exploring colleges, and then track season kicked in. I was in my own bubble. School, track, homework, sleep, repeat. One day, after track practice when I had just made a sandwich and sat down to watch a little stupid TV, before I tackled calculus, I heard some yelling and laughter coming from the front yard. I turned off Gilligan’s Island rerun and went to see what was up. A bunch of middle school kids from the neighborhood were standing in a circle surrounding Bobby. They were laughing and jeering at him. A couple of them had sticks and were poking at him. They had put a large paper shopping bag over his head. It seemed like he couldn’t figure out how to get it off. He was flailing his arms in front, reaching out and trying catch them like some sort of bizarre Marc Polo game. They were laughing at him. I was hit with a flood of emotions. They were laughing at my… brother. I was humiliated for Bobby, and I was angry at those little punks. When people say that they ‘saw red,’ I thought that was just a saying, but I can tell you it’s a real thing. It was like having a red filter wash over your eyes. It’s probably the blood rising in your head. I roared and they scattered. I went to Bobby and pulled the bag off his head. Do you know what he was doing? He was laughing. He was having the time of his life. He asked me where his friends went. They weren’t his friends. They were mean spirited little punks. I told him that their mothers had called them to come home for dinner.

Later that night I couldn’t shake the feelings I was having. I told my mother what had happened, and how I felt.

“That’s going to happen. There are always going to be bullies. But the best thing that you can do is be a champion for your brother.,” she said.

I was the BMOC at my school, the captain of the track team and pretty popular. I was a winner. No one would ever disrespect me like that, and I wasn’t going to let something like this happen to him. My track coach always praised me for my winning attitude and confidence. I wanted to do the same for Bobby. I was going to teach him to be a winner.

I was getting ready for school one morning. I was checking myself out in the mirror and Bobby came into my room.

“Cool jacket, man!” he said.

“Like it? “

It was a long black leather jacket like Neo wore in the Matrix. Haute Couture for high school kids in the year 2000. I wasn’t into the whole varsity athlete jacket look. This jacket transcended my jock-ness and elevated my overall coolness status at my high school. I begged my parents to get it for me for Christmas.

“Here, try it on.”

“No way.”

It was a little tight in the shoulders and the bottom of the coat nearly hit the floor., but damn, if he wasn’t wearing that thing. His whole demeanor changed. At school, as I walked with him down the halls, he was getting double take after double take. His facial expression was aloof and cool, until he saw one of his classmates, then he broke into his famous smile, and as he greeted them, he would introduce me.

“This is David. He’s my big brother. This is his jacket. He gave it to me for the day. Isn’t he great?”

He was on cloud nine. From that day onward I made a point of being seen with him on campus between classes whenever I could.

At practice a few days later, Mike came up to me and said,

“Hey, I saw your retard brother wearing your Neo jacket. He looked better than you. Haha.”

I could hear the blood pulsing in my ears. My heart was pounding.

“What did you say?

Mike looked at the white knuckles of my balled up fists. He knew immediately that he had poked the bear.

“Sorry Dave. Sorry. I meant Bobby was looking good. Really good.

“Don’t you ever use that word again.”

“Yes, I know that was stupid. I’m sorry Dave. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Later that week the coach made an announcement. He was looking for some volunteers to help with the special Olympics. A dream come true; I couldn’t believe my ears. This was just what I was looking for. I couldn’t wait to tell Bobby that he had a new coach, me. Mom and Dad seemed pretty excited when I told them that the special Olympics were coming to the Chicago area, and that I would be training Bobby in the 100 yard dash. Bobby was less than enthusiastic. On one hand, he was excited to be doing an activity with me, on the other hand, the training that I described freaked him out. No matter, with my expertise and a little hard work I was going to make him a champion.

On Saturday morning day one, Bobby and I started with some stretching. Then we jogged around the block. Bobby was out of breath and was ready to quit. I told him that it was going to get easier the more we did it. That was kind of a fib, but I needed to keep him motivated.

“Do you know the great thing about you Bobby?

“What.”

“You’re not a quitter.”

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not. Do you remember when you were playing the paper bag game, and you were trying to catch your friends? Well, you almost had them. They’re the ones who quit.”

“Yeah, they had to go.”

“Right. You were the winner. You are a winner.”

For the next couple of weeks, it was tough for Bobby but slowly he started to catch his wind. We worked out after school and on weekends. I taught him quick start techniques for coming off the blocks. Push with the front foot and pull with the back foot, ideally staying at a forty-five degree angle. I was sure this was going to give him the edge. About a week before the race, we were running through the park near the house. There was this skinny kid walking his big German Shepard on a leash. As we passed, I made eye contact with the dog. Big mistake. We got about thirty yards away and the dog bolted. It dragged the kid about five yards before he lost the handle. Bobby slowed down and cranked his head backwards to look at the barking dog.

“He wants to play.”

“No, he doesn’t! Run Bobby, RUN!”

We kicked it in pretty good. Bobby even passed me for a minute. We rounded the corner into the neighborhood. We heard the kid yell for the dog, and it lost interest in us. We got to the front lawn and fell down laughing.

“The dog was going to bite my butt!”

“You looked like a doggie treat to him.”

“He wanted Bobby butt!”

“He did, he did!”

I stood up and helped Bobby to his feet.

“I think you’re ready, man.”

The day of the special Olympics was very festive. There were balloons and banners and huge crowds. Mom and dad, my aunts and uncles, and a lot of our friends came out to support Bobby. I was getting butterflies as his event approached. I managed to get to Bobby for one last pep talk.

“You got this Bobby! You’re a winner. Do you know that?”

“I got this David!”

The officials came and wrangled the runners to their staring positions. I made my way back to the stands and joined my mom and dad. My mom gave me a little hug.

“How’s it going coach?

“Good, great, he’s got this.”

Bobby knelt and placed his feet in the starting blocks.

“Runners take your marks.”

Bang! Bobby was off like a shot! His form was perfect. It was a quick race, and he was well ahead of the pack. I started cheering. He had it on lock. At about the fifty yard mark a runner in the next lane tripped and fell. It Looked like he hurt his ankle but was trying to get up. Bobby noticed, slowed, and stopped.

“No, Bobby! Go! Go!”

I was screaming. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Bobby ran over to his fellow runner and helped him up. He put his arms around his shoulder. The other runners pitched in and helped too. The crowd was going wild. The group of runners continued the race. They all crossed the finish line together. A crowd of people surrounded the runners. I pushed my way through the crowd. Bobby saw me and hugged me really hard.

“We did it! We did it, we won!”

I was speechless.

“Hey everybody, this is my big brother David. He taught me how to be a runner. He taught me how to be a winner. Now, I can do anything!”

Bobby passed away from Covid due to his ongoing heart problems in 2020. I miss him a lot. I sat down at the kitchen table with the cupcakes. My wife was visiting her mother with the kids. The place was quiet. It was funny that back then I thought I was teaching him to be a winner, but really, he was the one teaching me what it means to be a champion. It’s just about midnight. I took a bite out of the cupcake. So gross. Happy birthday Bobby.


r/FictionWriting • • 5h ago

Advice [Feedback] Dark Fantasy / LitRPG – Prose, POV, and Readability

3 Upvotes

Please check out this chapter from my novel. Honest feedback on the prose, readability, and POV would be greatly appreciated. Also, do you think the following passage would flow better in first-person POV?

Scene: Dawn and other dark mages who awakened their power in the coming of age ceremony are now guided to the last part of the ceremony, to the council chambers where elders will judge based on their powers.

Thirty of them marched past the dark stone wall, guided only by the flickering flames of rusty iron chandeliers. Without warning, the group came to an abrupt halt. Lost in thought, Dawn bumped right into the back of the young mage ahead of him.

“Sorry...“ Dawn muttered, staggering back to catch his balance on the cold stone floor.

The young mage didn’t even turn around, barely registering the collision. Up at the front of the procession, an attendant’s hands came together with a sharp, echoing clap.

“Nobles first, then commoners! Split into two lines,“ the attendant shouted. “Quick now!“

Swiftly the students started to form a line. Dawn scanned the divide, silk dark cloak and polished boots lined right, dark faded tunic and tattered sandals lined left. Commoners or high folks? The system had ripped him from his world and dumped him directly into this sequence, leaving only his appearance unchanged. He knew nothing about his origins or lineage. How could he know where he belonged if he had not been told?

As Dawn was about to step into a queue, a massive hairy hand slammed him against his chest, shoving him back. “Where are you pulling into mutt” a guttural voice barked. “Hide your ugly mug alongside the commoners.”

Before Dawn could regain his footing, a second hand reached out, catching the brute’s wrist and wrenching it away.

“Now, now, Darwin,“ a smoother voice intervened, cool and condescending. “Even if he is a half breed, noble blood still lingers in him.“ The brute muttered something under his breath but fell in line like a well trained hound. It only took one word for him to keep the mutt under control. He eyed Dawn for a beat, then stepped back. “Malrick, give him some space.“ With a low grunt, the purple haired young mage backed up, clearing a gap in the queue. With a practised smile the savior gestured to the open spot, his voice smooth as silk. “Get in line, Dawn.“ Defeated, Dawn took refuge beside him among the noble ranks.

From the line he peeked another look at his saviour, Slicked back hair, calculative dead pan eyes, pale skin with a noble house crest knitted into his clock. Everything about the man screamed authoritative nobility. He flashed another smile, rotten and hollow, the fakest among fake.

“Now, the first five from the noble line, follow me“ the attendee called out.

Pulled into the line, Dawn was standing fifth. First was the brute, his massive frame hovering over everyone in the line. Second was the dark savior of Dawn, other two slots were filled with a purple dyed student with piercing, and a normal looking one. No code were followed in this school except the attire needed to be black.

The group followed the attendant toward a pair of massive oak doors. Pulling them open, he gestured for the young students to step inside.

A towering, crowded arena greeted them. Dozens of senior students looked down from the lower stands, while armored guards lined the dirt floor below. High above, in the upper wooden balconies, a few hooded elders stood watching. Their sharp eyes judged the new arrivals from beneath deep cowls, quiet fingers stroking long white beards.

Right in the center of the dirt floor, a single wide circle was drawn. A few feet back from the circle, a line of examiners sat behind wooden desks. Quill pens scratched fiercely across parchment as they scribbled notes.

“Welcome! The first batch is right on time!“

The speaker stepped forward to greet them, a teacher wearing round spectacles, a pointed witch’s hat, and a bushy white beard that billowed out like a pine tree.

“My name is Tharos,“ he continued, gesturing around the corner “And the one over there is Crowfeet.“

A few feet away, a second instructor hunched against the walls under the balcony shadows, his tall frame half-swallowed.

“As time is of the essence, we will begin the welcoming ceremony! No time for pep talks.“ Tharos turned toward the rear doors and ordered the guards, “Bring in the prisoners!“

Two hooded guards dragged forward five prisoners chained in a line. Heavy iron cuffs bound their wrists and ankles, clanking loudly as the captives struggled to walk. Sacks covered their heads completely.

Dawn’s chest tightened, a spike of cold panic piercing his gut. What were their crimes? What was about to happen? Around him, the other recruits stood impassive, as though expecting this all along. Everyone knew the rules of this ritual, except him.

As Dawn stood frozen in contemplation, a heavy hand patted against his shoulder.

It was his savior. The noble had effortlessly slipped out of his spot in line and stepped up beside him. According to whatever twisted logic of the system, they were supposed to know each other, yet Dawn’s mind remained a total blank, unable to retrieve a single memory of the man.

“Are you ready, Dawn?“ the noble asked.

Dawn wanted to mouth no, to scream it, but his instincts took over. “Yes,“ he muttered anyway, the word escaping his throat before he could stop it.

“No time to waste! First up, Corin from the House of Iron march!“ Tharos called out.

The brute stepped forward out of the line, his massive frame looming over the dirt circle. A guard stepped up, unlocked the lead chain from the line of captives, and guided a single prisoner with wrists and ankles still bound and forced him onto his knees directly before Corin.

“Start the timer on my mark! Corin, show us your power. The elders will judge!“

Tharos gave him a brief moment to prepare, but the brute looked more than ready, standing unnaturally tall and broad for a mage. As the signal was given, a guard flipped a heavy hourglass upside down, and grains of dark sand began to trickle down through the glass.

Corin activated his skill. From his broad shoulders, two massive arms made of solid shadow erupted into the air. With a brutal burst of violence, the giant hands of shadow slammed down, pummeling the helpless prisoner into the dirt.

After the fist’s first heavy impact, Dawn instinctively dropped his gaze toward the floor. Before he could look away, a firm hand clamped around his jaw and yanked his face back up.

“Don’t look down,“ a smooth voice whispered near his ear. “Look around us, Dawn. None of them are staring at the dirt. They are all looking death straight in the eye.“

The slick haired noble tilted Dawn’s head upward toward the balcony. “The elders are watching.“ He turned Dawn’s face back down toward the desk of instructors. “We are being judged. Act according to our noble name.“

He released his grip, leaving Dawn forced to witness the brutal onslaught as shadow hands mangled the lifeless body. Dawn was no stranger to butchering livestock or the stench of rotting animal carcasses but now he would have to get used to the sight and smell of human blood too.

“And time!“ The guard flipped the hourglass flat and checked the remaining sand. “Ten seconds!“ he announced to the arena.

Tharos shook his head slightly. “If you had stopped your meaningless rampage early, that could have been a record.“

Across the arena wall, the grand slate board shuddered. The name holding tenth place dropped lower, triggering a domino effect down the line. The fiftieth name vanished from the bottom entirely as the forty ninth slipped into its place.

“You are currently tenth on the leaderboard,“ Tharos announced.

Corin threw his arms wide, flexing his massive muscles in triumph as a handful of senior students scattered throughout the crowd offered lazy applause. High above in the balcony, the elders remained silence, unimpressed. At the long wooden bench, the examiners jotted down their notes.

After allowing Corin a brief moment to bathe in his glory, the guards escorted him out of the ring. A cleanup crew rushed in immediately, dragging the mangled remains away and leaving behind only a slick, pool of blood staine in the center of the dirt.

“Now for our second recruit, Matthew of the Vlodrath family! Come forward,“ Tharos called out.

The savior with the polished black hair stepped smoothly into the spotlight. A wave of murmurs rippled through the arena. A few senior students cheered, while others looked on with sharp, astonished eyes.

Dawn watched him walk forward, his lingering suspicions confirmed. Matthew was clearly from a high ranking house and dawn belong to the same house as him.

“Now once I give the signal, you can show your powers to the elders“. Dawn frowned, by showing powers now has a darker meaning then anything else.

As Tharos signaled, Matthew took out the dagger from his belt and lunged at the prisoner, slitting his throat without a shred of remorse. Not a single second was wasted.

He glanced over at the guard operating the hourglass and shrugged. “Turn the hourglass upside down again!“

“The trial only ends when you show us your powers. It’s not about how fast you can kill,“ Tharos snapped, giving him a scornful look.

High above, a few elders gasped in disappointment, while the examiners at the desk didn’t even look fazed, they had seen this arrogant rookie mistake a thousand times before.

“Fine,“ Matthew declared.

He opened his palm and twitched his fingers, weaving invisible dark threads from his finger tips that slid directly into the fresh wound on the prisoner’s neck. He held the stance for a moment before commanding in an cold voice, “Arise!“

The dead body mechanically jerked upward to its feet.

“A Puppeteer,“ one elder murmured from the balcony, sounding quiet impressed. Beside him, another wore a proud smile, as if to say, That’s my boy.

“And that’s time!“ Tharos shouted, glaring toward the guard.

“Twenty seconds!“ the guard called out.

The reanimated corpse stumbled forward a few feet before collapsing back into the dirt like a broken rag doll. As the cleanup crew dragged the body away, Matthew walked past Dawn, silently lipping the words good luck before stepping out of the arena.

As the lineup moved faster and faster, Dawn fidgeted nervously with his hands. He checked his status screen several times, but the truth remained unyielding. Neither the class bestowed upon him nor his skills had changed.

Up ahead, the queue dissolved quickly. The purple-haired boy summoned a small brigade of skeletons to tear into his target, while the quiet silence student calmly coated his blade in poison before finishing off his prisoner. They logged times of thirty and thirty five seconds, respectively.

Finally, the floor was cleared and his Dawn’s turn.

“Velkar from-” his voice suddenly cutting out with a strange, unnatural static. Tharos entire frame glitched for a fraction of a second. As if the system is fixing a mistake, “...Dawn from the Vlodrath family!“

Dawn didn’t bother worrying about the system glitch. He had far bigger problems to survive right now. He swallowed hard and stepped into the center of the circle.

“Wait for my signal. Then, you may use your power,“ Tharos said.

Dawn could feel the weight of every eye in the arena preying upon him. Tharos gave the signal, and the guard flipped the hourglass.

Dawn activated his skill: Summon Orb.

A tiny black sphere materialized in the air in front of him, hovered for a split second, and then dropped straight into the dirt with a pathetic plop.

A wave of muffled chuckles rippled through the stands. Tharos quickly silenced the crowd with a sharp glare before gesturing for Dawn to proceed. Over at the instructors’ bench, however, the examiners leaned into one another, exchanging urgent whispers.

“What is your class?“ one of the examiners called out, breaking protocol.

“It’s called Void Caller... ah, sir,“ Dawn replied, his voice barely holding steady.

The examiner slid his spectacles down the bridge of his nose, squinting at his parchment. “And what is the rank of your class and skill?“

“SSS-rank, sir. Both of them.“

“Continue,“ the examiner ordered flatly, turning back to his colleagues as they frantically began scribbling notes and debating among themselves.

Dawn took the sphere into his hands, looking out at the crowd. Up close, it resembled a heavy iron cannonball, polished slick like a black bowling ball without finger holes. When he lifted it with both hands, the weight sank heavily into his arms, around twenty pounds of solid black metal.

“What is your power again?“ the examiner pressed, leaning over his notes as the sand inside the hourglass slowly dripped away.

“Ah... it’s this,“ Dawn stammered. He lifted the iron sphere, balancing it in both hands to show the entire gallery. “I can summon this ball.“

A sudden wave of roaring laughter erupted from the senior students.

“Silence! Silence!“ Tharos barked, glaring sharply at the laughing crowd. “Let Dawn from House Vlodrath finish his-”

“That insolent brat is not from the Vlodrath family!“

A roar interrupted and shattered the mood as an old bastard in the balcony jumped from his seat, leaning over the wooden railing with a face twisted in rage. “I have controlled enough tolerance, One member’s failure to control his sexual urge will not leave a black mark to the entire clan! Never utter our house name again alongside that brat’s name.“

With that single outburst, the entire chamber went dead silent.

What did I do to piss that old fellow off again?

Dawn stared down at the heavy black sphere resting in his hands. Holding it tight, he took a hesitant step toward the kneeling prisoner. Beneath the rough sack, the captive let out muffled, frantic whimpers, his mouth bound tight beneath the cloth.

Dawn glanced back over his shoulder at Tharos and the examiners, his wide, desperate eyes silently pleading for someone to intervene.

The pressure unlocked a core memory, where he had stood frozen on a stage during a speech competition, paralyzed under the glare of a hundred staring faces. But this wasn’t a speech. He didn’t want his first act in this world to be murdering a helpless man with a twenty pound bowling ball.

A tongue clicked sharply from the darkness.

It was Crowfeet. The instructor hidden beneath the shadow glided forward, his tall frame cutting through the dim light as he clenched his fists. Without a word of warning, Crowfeet grabbed the prisoner by the head, slammed him face first into the dirt, and pushed his knee into the man’s chest, pinning him to the ground.

“The timer won’t stop until you kill him,“ He pointed a long, bony finger at the sphere in Dawn’s hands. “You hold a weapon. Use it.“

Dawn’s hands trembled as he adjusted his grip on the heavy sphere. He closed the distance, raising the ball up near his chin to gain momentum.

“H-huh...“ Dawn gasped, losing his balance for a fraction of a second.

“If you drop that on my leg, I will kill you myself,“ Crowfeet growled without looking up.

A few muffled snickers snuck out from the senior students in the stands, though Dawn took a small, twisted comfort in knowing the other particpants had already been escorted out and couldn’t witness this embarrassment. Still, Crowfeet’s threat worked. Panic surged through Dawn’s veins. He quickly lowered the heavy ball back down to his waist, bent his knees, and released his grip, the sphere went down toward the captive’s head.

Crack.

The heavy iron smashed into the prisoner’s nose with a sickening crunch. The ball rebounded off the face and rolled away into the dirt. blood instantly soaked through the sack.

Dawn spun around, gulping his bile back to his stomach.

Crowfeet let out a long, disappointed sigh. Raising his hand, he activated a telekinesis skill, the iron orb lifted off the ground and floated directly into his palm. Wrapping his fingers around the ball, the instructor brought the sphere down onto the prisoner’s head again and again, raining relentless blows until the captive stopped breathing and the skull caved in completely.

Crowfeet tossed the bloody sphere carelessly into the dirt.

“Stop the timer!“ Tharos shook his head. “It doesn’t even count!“

Before Dawn could even catch his breath or wipe the cold sweat from his forehead, two guards stepped up, grabbed him by the arms, and forcefully escorted him out of the arena.


r/FictionWriting • • 22m ago

A Disposable Breed

• Upvotes

First Page:

A Disposable Breed
These old Baltimore row homes are drafty. Always have been. It’s a mix of clanking baseboard heat, original plaster, leaky windows, and that distinct, heavy smell of the city. The noise hits me loud now—trucks grinding down the boulevard, sirens, and a dog going nuts. Yeah, it feels like Mom and Dad’s old house. But it doesn't feel like home.
I go through the morning routine robotically. No thinking required. Shower, shave, then it’s time to put on today’s tactical gear. A suit.
I’m back in the old house, it just isn’t home anymore and I realize it may just be the last time. Dad’s funeral might be the last call back to this place for me. He is the last of the old neighborhood and the old men that made me who I am.
I pause for a second, collect myself, and go back to wrestling with my damn tie.
Dad taught me how to tie this knot. The simple muscle memory sparks a whole catalog of history I wasn't planning to look at today. Suddenly, I can see him standing right in the doorway.
“You’re going to wear a suit, son,” he’d say, carrying a brand of pride I didn't have the mileage to understand back then. “We ain’t poor people. People who are worth a damn respect the church and wear a suit.”
He was proud his kids had church clothes. He wanted that noticed, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting us walk around looking destitute. Dad didn’t hate poor people—he just spent his entire life escaping poverty the hard way, and he wasn't about to let his family play at poverty let alone actually be poor.
I catch myself grinning a bit, realizing how the bare minimum for me was a massive victory for him. Shoes, clean clothes, three meals a day—I took it all as a given. We went to school every morning like every other kid on the block. No big deal.
But for Dad? In his youth, shoes were a luxury. Clothes were hand-me-downs of hand-me-downs. Food was something you might have to fight for, assuming it was even on the table. And school? By age nine, he was clocking into the lumber mill. By eleven he was big enough for the mine.
He knew the rule I didn't: people who are actually poor never want to look the part. He was dead-set determined that his younguns would never worry about a meal or a pair of boots, and that no one on this earth would ever call them "poor white trash" or "hillbillies."
I finally get the knot centered over the collar. I pull on the vest, slide into the jacket, and take a seat on the edge of the mattress in my sister’s spare room. I look at the old laminate dresser. I go through my memories, trying to build the eulogy.
Who was Emmit Tackett? Who were the old men who tried to keep us on track?
They grew up dirt poor, got drafted, and watched absolute horror and death overseas. Then they came home, got ignored by the country they bled for, and still put their heads down and built lives in this city. Those old men were a breed we just don't get anymore. The factory that made them was closed down long ago. Closed due to cruelty, and now they’re disappearing exactly how they lived: quietly.


r/FictionWriting • • 40m ago

Short Story They Come at Night by Garry E McMillan

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r/FictionWriting • • 1h ago

My Friend’s Cousin- Chapter 7

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r/FictionWriting • • 2h ago

Novel Short-Sleeve Comrades: Ever Feel Out of Place When Everyone Else Is Wearing Long Sleeves?

0 Upvotes

Hey, you.

Ever found yourself wearing short sleeves when everyone around you has already switched to long sleeves?

Clink-clonk.

The bell over Aoi's door rang, and somehow that sound made the end of my day finally begin.

I took my usual seat, and Mama set down my Harper without asking. The ice gave a soft clink in the glass.

Taka was sitting beside me.

In short sleeves.

October had arrived, and the mornings and evenings were getting noticeably cooler. I'd worn a jacket myself. The afternoons could still be warm, though, so it was that awkward time of year when you never quite knew what to put on.

Even so, just looking at Taka made me feel cold.

"Aren't you freezing?"

"Pretty much."

"Then why the short sleeves?"

"It was hot this morning."

"You could've brought a jacket."

"Easy to say now."

Easy to say now? Wasn't that what weather forecasts were for?

Taka rubbed his arms. He still had the thick arms of a former professional wrestler. Apparently, muscles didn't make you immune to cold weather.

"I was the only guy wearing short sleeves at the station today."

"So?"

"Felt like I'd lost."

"To who?"

"Autumn."

I'd never met anyone who considered the seasons a personal rival.

"So you've been putting up with the cold?"

"Nah. Not putting up with anything."

"You were rubbing your arms just now."

"That was a check."

"A check for what?"

"Whether short sleeves are still an option."

They clearly weren't.

If I was cold, I'd admit I was cold. If I hadn't brought a jacket, I'd buy one somewhere. I certainly wouldn't fight the weather just to defend my decision to leave home in a T-shirt.

But apparently, Taka had a different problem.

"Anyway, I spotted another guy in short sleeves."

"Oh?"

"Man, that made me happy."

"Friend of yours?"

"Never seen him before."

"Then what were you happy about?"

"One of my people."

I took a sip of Harper.

Finding a complete stranger and deciding he was a comrade. That was Taka for you.

He'd always been unusually good at closing the distance with people he'd just met. By the time I'd finished wondering whether I had any reason to talk to someone, Taka would already be chatting with them.

Though in this case, he hadn't even spoken to the guy.

"So if you saw someone on the street wearing the exact same Uniqlo T-shirt as you, what would you think?"

"One of my people."

"Didn't even hesitate."

"Come on. Wouldn't you be happy?"

"I'd feel awkward."

"Why?"

"We'd be wearing the same shirt."

"That means we've got the same taste."

"It's mass-produced."

"Exactly. Means I've got lots of people!"

Well, there was an answer I hadn't expected.

If I saw someone wearing the same shirt as me, I'd rather they kept their distance. Nothing against them. It would just feel a little embarrassing.

Taka was the opposite.

All it took was choosing the same thing, and he felt some kind of connection with a stranger.

And the stranger didn't even have to agree.

What a convenient arrangement.

A little farther down the counter, Tom rested his cigarette in the ashtray.

"What about uniforms?"

"Uniforms?"

"Everyone wearing the same uniform is one of your people?"

"Sure. Same school, same company."

"Prison uniforms?"

"Tom, why'd you jump straight to prison?"

Mama laughed.

Given that Tom used to be a cop, maybe it wasn't so strange for prison to be the first thing that came to mind. Though you'd think he could have picked something a little less extreme.

"But Taka," Mama asked, "would you actually go talk to someone wearing the same shirt?"

"Nah."

"Then what changes?"

"My mood."

Mama's eyes softened.

I couldn't help laughing.

He didn't need anyone to acknowledge him, and he wasn't planning to do anything with his newfound comrade. Just knowing there was someone dressed like him made him happy.

A remarkably inexpensive form of happiness.

Still, if something that small could improve his mood, maybe it wasn't such a bad deal.

"All right, then. Which end of a chocolate cornet do you eat first?"

"The fat end. Where the chocolate is."

"Me too."

"One of my people!"

"That's not what I meant."

I'd asked out of curiosity. Naturally, that was his answer.

"What about fried eggs?"

"Sunny-side up."

"Me too."

"Oh!"

"Soy sauce or regular sauce?"

"Soy sauce."

"Me too."

"Kenichi!"

Taka slapped me on the shoulder.

"What?"

"We really are on the same wavelength!"

"Bit late to discover that."

Come to think of it, we'd been drinking together for quite a while.

And yet today was the first time I'd learned which end of a chocolate cornet he ate first.

I'd never needed to know, and I couldn't imagine the knowledge changing anything.

But Taka looked delighted.

Just finding out I ate something the same way he did made him look as though he'd won a prize.

"When do you break the yolk?" Mama asked.

"At the end," Taka said.

"First thing, for me."

"Aw, man!"

Taka threw his head back dramatically.

"So close!"

"To what?"

"We matched on everything until that!"

"We don't have to match on everything."

Was the timing of a fried egg's yolk really a measure of whether two people got along?

And then something occurred to me.

What did I use to decide whether I got along with someone?

Someone who approached work the way I did? Someone I could talk to without getting tired? Someone who understood what I meant without a long explanation?

All of those sounded reasonable.

But by those standards, Taka and I should never have gotten along in the first place.

We disagreed about more things than we agreed on.

"But wouldn't it be amazing to meet someone exactly like you?" Taka asked.

"How?"

"Same clothes, same food, same movies. Everything."

"Sounds creepy."

"Why? Sounds perfect."

He seemed to mean it.

I couldn't see the appeal.

What was interesting about talking to someone who always gave you the same answer?

At work, sure, it was useful to have people who reached the same decisions I did. Less explaining, fewer unnecessary arguments.

But did I really want that from someone I drank with?

Tom flicked ash into his tray.

"Just because two people like the same thing doesn't mean they like it for the same reason."

Taka turned toward him.

"Reason?"

"Why'd you buy that T-shirt?"

"It was cheap."

"The other guy might've bought it because he liked the design."

"Sure. Could be."

"And why do you eat a chocolate cornet from the fat end?"

"That's where all the chocolate is."

"Someone else might just hate being left with plain bread at the end."

"Oh. I get it."

I'd never given much thought to why I started at the fat end myself. That was simply how I'd always eaten one.

"Making the same choice doesn't mean you're thinking the same thing," I said.

Taka tilted his head.

"But isn't that fine?"

"What is?"

"Even if our reasons are different, we still like the same thing."

"Well, sure."

"And if our reasons are different, that's just more stuff to talk about."

I didn't have much of an answer to that.

I tended to assume that the same result must have come from the same reasoning. Maybe that was an occupational habit.

Meanwhile, Taka was already happily thinking up more foods we might agree on.

Mama set down the glass she'd been polishing.

"So, Taka. What if you met someone who was exactly like you in every way?"

"That'd be perfect!"

"Really?"

"Huh?"

Mama continued wiping the glass.

"Someone who says 'Me too' to everything you say. Eats everything you eat. Wants to do everything you want to do."

"...Well, that might be a little..."

"Boring?"

"Not boring, exactly."

Taka scratched his head.

"I guess we'd run out of things to talk about."

I laughed.

"You just said it'd be perfect."

"I didn't think you meant that identical!"

"You said everything."

"I know what I said!"

Mama laughed.

A little farther away, Tom lit another cigarette. He shifted the ashtray so the smoke wouldn't drift toward us. In that respect, he was very different from Taka.

Taka would start talking before he thought to worry. Tom would watch someone for a while before saying a word. Mama watched both of them.

And there I was, asking Taka unnecessary questions and getting lost in my own thoughts.

"So what do you and I have in common?"

"Uh..."

"Nothing, right?"

"Sure we do."

"Like what?"

"We both come to Aoi."

"...That's it?"

"Isn't that enough?"

Taka smiled.

I turned my glass.

I doubted Taka and I came to this bar for the same reasons.

We drank different things, and the days we brought through that door were different, too. Yet somewhere along the way, seeing each other here had become ordinary.

We'd never made any arrangements. We just showed up, and someone was usually there.

"By the way, Taka."

"Yeah?"

"Still cold?"

"Freezing."

"How are you getting home?"

"Running."

"Buy a jacket."

Taka stood up and stretched.

"I'll be fine. I've got my short-sleeve comrades out there."

"They're probably freezing too."

"We'll manage together!"

"No, you won't."

Mama burst out laughing.

Taka grinned as he reached for his wallet.

Honestly. Cold was cold, no matter how many people were suffering through it together.

Still, maybe knowing there was another idiot out there made it a little easier to bear.

Not that I really understood.

Hey, you.

When you meet someone who likes the same things you do, does it make you happy?

Or does it make you feel a little awkward?

You might have chosen the same thing for completely different reasons.

But maybe that's where a conversation begins.

See you again at Aoi.

---

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Step back inside. We'll help you find your next story.

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r/FictionWriting • • 2h ago

The Cowboy- Western Nuclear story

1 Upvotes

High in the lush frontier lands with trees with green leaves, grey rocks, and a small farm. A cowboy made his home in a cozy cabin with glass windows that looked out over a rushing grey rocky mountain wet stream. Out in the stable, his quarter horse was tucked away, safe from the evening chill. Indoors, warm and he swallowed his orange pills the shape of mike & ikes and for the morning. The cowboy forgot his name and some parts of his own past, He only remembered he had family from the wild west including Billy the boy, He is now just called the cowboy or frontier.  Late into the nighttime a sudden storm with a blue lightning shock. The rain lashed out down against the wooden homestead, drumming into the horse's water silver bowl with a sharp, beating that sounded like water forced through a strainer. He drank sarsaparilla looking in the mountain range. There was a far building called the - BLACKWOOD INSTITUTE -   Back As the physicians that worked there had a somewhat grey rolling table trolley of a red vial called a cure that could cure any disease such as cancer, epilepsy, ADHD, Parkinson's disease and more. 18 physicians, scientists and 2 intelligent theorists with white robes rolled it into a grey Doctors room. Their machines were hissing. The vial contains many atoms such as normal and nuclear atoms with quanta. Destroying life's DNA. Dr Fleming grabbed one sweating from struggling on his fists and slowly tried to study it by putting it on the long table. with Doctor Addison in the back yelling out “be careful!” As Fleming was close to slipping the glass vial with bubbly red liquid. Doctor Drew was with them seeing it slip and the atoms split between slowly as the vial filled with a red liquid struck hitting the floor like the bomb from 1945 from WWII. It was a fireball blast of more than  1000 suns as one man said. The doctors ran out and hit the elevators and hit a glowing button Ø  going to ground zero. where the bomb will not hit them, Radioactive particles live out the land as a shockwave comes out with something like zombies ghouls walking around. People called them ghouls as they describe. Back at the cabin the Cowboy drank a bottle of sarsaparilla and finished the whole thing.  Many glass bottles were on the cabin floor,  A camo colored binoculars laid on a table, The ban notified if there was a fire near, Seeing the Fireball burning his cabin around with windows exploded , "That's a big flame almost grabbing the Walkie-Talkie. he said, as he retracted and recoil to the back on his wooden floor with burns. But in the cabin the horses were alive. with turning the land to radioactive areas. The cowboy had an outfit, a satchel filled with items such as cigarettes, coins and drinks. a yellow tinted Geiger counter taped up, and his leather ripped hat. He brought a back rifle with him and a revolver. He wanted to know if his friend was still okay. He opened outside, “his mailman has been giving him mail, at a bad-time now he is just a skeleton, holding ripped paper from my newspaper. He rode through new Man-Made settlements, raiders or bandits. As he was shooting down ghouls as they bled out. His friend's house was about 2 days away. By coming down the mountain seeing settlements made from ruined cars and trucks, with homes or wood, scrapped up objects and scratched windows.  He walked through a broken road seeing a Stop Sign bent, road signs and traffic lights taped up, soon enough an officer stopped him. Want to get through? “Yes sir” The Cowboy said as the Officer in blue leathered police uniform with a suit and belt,  said you got trade to get through its kind the law now. The Cowboy said ""the Horse is not for sale ""we never asked about that horse” He passed down 2 shiny quarters “Toll roads still exist throughout the war as he moaned, The Officer said “Thats It? At least you passed something not a Marlboro cigarette” He went throughout the wasteland seeing a new settlement. not heading that area until later, He saw a white diner then hoped for the horse, a ghoul walked by, Thanks for helping. Shooting him down. Stay put as he tied up a horse. The sign was neon colored saying DINER–24-7, making the words with wood and painting them.  The windows taped and boarded up. The Cowboy walked into the diner, “Got any food?” The owner replied “Well I guess the world has ended, It's hard to find food," said the man covered in ash. Give me anything from that leather satchel I see” The cowboy replied saying I have a drink, does that count?. “Sure,” the owner said,. You can get bread, passing down bread towards this man's hands. The Diner was filled with colors, destroyed ripped posters were on the wall, next to a destroyed glass jukebox. “BUDLITE” “COCA-COLA” next to its restaurants MENU poster with breakfast, lunch, and dinner and desserts, The Diner was neon, colorful, lights flickered, since you killed the rotten ghoulish monsters outside my diner I will give it to you for free, passing to the cowboy the coins. “Okay” said the Cowboy, The cowboy sat on a seat eating his bread, as he finished he stated “ I gotta go find my friend. He is out there somewhere, “Okay be safe” the worker said. He hopped broken glass back on the horse as he pulled and untied his reins, gave him a small kick, saw a barbershop seeing the pole not spinning, and as well in front of the diner was a big Shopping mall made from bricks and windows. He walked in kicking down a wooden door and jumped off a horse. “Welp, is it open? Are people alive?” He walked inside was the lights were shadowy and dim. People raided the areas killing the ghoulish. bringing Prayer Votive candles for light, He looked around the building with 12 men looking back as different eyes and hair colored some dyed, and they all tattooed their Blood Type like they did in historical war. They both helped out their weapons, as one of the raiders shot a man-made pistol from wood. The Cowboy shot with a rifle bleeding dead, “Raider zone i guess” He said.  He took out pulling a pistol shot by shot hitting the raiders legs crippled, as the guns flew out in the air falling. He recoiled after a bullet hit out, Looking through shelves seeing Aidkits and food shelfs, at the bottom it was dusty and empty, He saw 2  rotary phones by the shelf by the cash register. He walked up to a blackphone and pretended to call his family, “For Dinner get some Club Soda, Salisbury Steak, and some Icecream after, as he set the phone down “ done with this bullcrap.” Walking out towards the horse that smells like leather, Hopping on seeing a church with pews held back like barricades and a dead man. like he was a soldier fighting off, holding a greyish pistol,  he saw a small town, He found some ghouls, he grabbed out a shotgun and shot some. They bleed out, destroyed again, Another 3 groups of ghouls of ghoulish creatures came from the left, putting the gun in the back he used the revolver, as they died for mercy. He spotted a somewhat settlement showed off in the east side man-made, a Ford F-Series truck , barricaded farm fence, and a whole wood house aligned, people are there  from the right are towns”, he went to the town and went in an abandoned house, as that what he said, seeing destroyed neighborhoods, glass demolished. Bones, only bark and no leaves, The door was loose, Tried that one, went to the back of the door and tied the horse to a fence, grabbed some pillowsheets off the couch and moved it towards the garage area. Dust bunnies flew towards him. It was late. He found a switch to turn off lights in the garage closing the doors, Rubbish around his horse making sounds until The horses feel asleep, 30 Minutes later he heard doors opening sounding like 2 men raiding and ransacking the area, Hearing  a guy saying “Dude Don’t make any sound, someone is sleeping here. As someone else said Ok Ok, whispering, Hearing a fridge open taking a bottle of beer, Someone taking coins off of a shelf, which made the the man wake up, Feeling cold, walking towards them  he grabbed out a revolver putting new rounds in, Gave them a Threat to go away, “ Sir put everything down” putting the bandits at gunpoint,  I'm trying to sleep, bring that ba-ck. They implied well not to die. Ran out like a kid scared of a Dressed up clown during Halloween times, knocking the door on the floor, “those idiots,“the Cowboy said, He went back to the garage and saw something interesting, A leathered box with an analog watch, glossy white.  “Man, what has he been collecting?” He said “Nobody Owns it now, Well I can take it,” putting it on his arm checking the time. On the second day, he opened the door, and took a cigarette. He found out there was a Storm bunker outside. He walked towards it . It cracked its fingers to open it, twisting the knob. A man with his friend and his wife stayed there from the blast, The food was almost gone, They got a small scare from some man trespassing. “Are you okay?” “Yes," a young man replied . It's just a fallout now. The blast has stopped” He passed food from his satchel to the young men. “I got to go,”  He walked over. He made a mounting block out of wood and went on the horse, “Walk on!” The cowboy said to his horse, as he untied him running out towards the street nearest to the church and settlements, As he rode through he did not have a white map, He new what the house look like, Driving the another street, Seeing it, Is that it, It looks more "Updated” from the ghoulish war, The house had barricades with zombies dead on the barricade. All over for the zombies to die, Ghouls came from the left and the right there's too many to shoot at he said, As he knocked on the garage door, A shadowy of a Caucasian figure of him appeared wearing leathered welding goggles shined, Like seeing a Cyclops from the Odyssey, Dusty he stated, while shooting down the rest of the ghouls. His friend was named John. He had an interesting thing that he did, making shining blades and somewhat killing axes. He said his latest was removing 2 licence plates from cars and making a blade, “gas is expensive.” Nobody drives much now. He made blades as well.  He looked at the cowboy, “Well you have an addiction to cigarettes and drinks.” You need to stop and get help, Same with you making blades, “OK that was uncalled for.” John Implied, The Cowboy showed his arm, I have a long scratch, His geiger counter was clicking from the radiation 14 clicks per minute every second, You got something, It was purple and red, John said “Welp, come to the Kitchen” his hands pointed while it was ashy from work,. As they both walked in He opened up a top wood cabinet for medicine by a sink with dirty plates. It was a needle with a lot of potency. Stabbing him to stay still and the needle made a sharp dense hissing sound, Breath in, As the Cowboy took a breath gagging he saw the scratch wither away such as his radioactive count went to 1 to 0 on the geiger counter. John opened up a fridge filled with magnets on the door. A list to buy before the blast. And a blueprint of his weapons. Having food and drinks inside,  Here take this are you thirsty,  passing him an alcoholic beverage of beer like throwing off a baseball in sporting events. The Cowboy said I do drink alcoholic beverages man , not a lot though, You got any Sasparilla? Rootbeer? “I was waiting for you to say this”. He went to the Garage taking a wooden crate of 9 bottles of Sarsaparilla bottles, grabbing a rusty red crowbar with dust flying in the air, he came back showing the cowboy the open crate of sarsaparilla, The cowboy put one his a leather satchel, Did you feel or see it, John questioned? What? What do you mean? The high big explosion of that atomic bomb, “Any type of flash?, which made the world end,”  John said he felt it and saw a glimpse of it, “What did you see?” The cowboy stated “I was out in the Mountains drinking my sarsaparilla, taking my orange pills, I saw the blast in the distance out my windows why windows broke, My drink was empty and dry, first a blast next a drink that was empty. We need to discover what happened.” The cowboy thought it was a good idea. Let's take a day here though for a break,  John questioned but “you really had to bring a horse here? “Smelled like leather” He stated “”yes i did“, He responded with" “He's my giddyup pal, Why do you want to wait a day?” John questioned back at him,

“Where to land first, Where not to go? “John told him on the leathered floor there's a couch you can sit on tonight. The cowboy said “sure why not” the room went quiet as the horse made the sound, Huph!, they planned out a map, Got any paper?,  John said there's probably some ripped paper in the garage, there's tons of pens in there also” As he moved and grabbed pens and a paper there John and him drew out a map of the land. “wait what's the name” The lands so destroyed I forgot” The cowboy drew the settlement he saw, such as the diner and the church, That's much as we know now, Then he drew the institute and 20 dots which stated how many people destroyed us, he put the Sarsaparilla bottles, more coins and the map, aged paper. John walked next to the cowboy Riding his horse, “have you seen this settlement” named “DRYWOOD”

Dropping off the horse, Stay put! John brought his important blades he uses

“Throughout my house working John” replied they saw 2 wooden boxes on top were gas-lit lanterns and they opened a blue long farm door with a screeching sound. “Needs some oil” John implied. Many men and women and kids were there,  a furnace lit laid on the floor, cooking carrot stew. A man in wrinkles waiting to finish. “Smells like Someone died in the stew, was it you or the carrot stew?” coffee boiled near him.

They had a giant geiger counter, to be careful, a whiteboard to tell if they are okay, 5 tallys 卌 of knowing who died, Many men and women were there, Some old, some younger,  They had a small area for teaching kids there, at the bottom a newsrack with someone writing news of today drawing paper with stencil and paper, 

A few kids walked across near beds laying on the ground, “are you scared at anytime you fight someone” a small girl asked “not really at all anymore” as the cowboy said taking the hat off crouching on his knees on the wet wood broken apart on the floor, I used to be,  “Be careful out there, “ she said  The Cowboy said,  “Alright.”.

Next towards a minifridge filled with bottles and other treats and food. Filled with magnets on the shelf, that were postcards from around the world, some International GERMANY, ROME USA, ICELAND,  USA,  shifted to the left bent, John said “someone travels a lot, Jesus.”

 “Cowboy, we need to meet the Overseer, “ The Cowboy questioned who's the Overseer? The Cowboy questioned  a scratched up sign in red wood (-DON’T SHOOT, DO NOT STEAL -). With her signature The cowboy  knocked on the door,  “housekeeping!” “not that funny.” Come in, The Overseer said.

The Cowboy and John walked in and saw her sitting on a wood chair with a desk in front,  So, you need something? Staring down at the spill of shining coins on her desk  like she just won a match in VEGAS by her pen and paper by a broken radio station. Have you heard of  the Institute? The Explosion? She said yes, definitely a shockwave came through. He set a map down on the desk,  could you help us and the cowboy get there at any chance, “pay in coins if you need help” “Okay” The men responded, grabbing 5 coins. She wrote on the map more locations. More towns were drawn out, A gas station? That's a death wish, You gotta head there first, kill the ghouls, take some items, I believe someone still works in the establishment, 2 story Hotels, “useless junk buildings is that important?” John said. You got any other pen coloring to draw out where to head to the institute, “Yes i do, It's going to take days” she grabbed a red pen drawing nine of what lines where to ride the horse to, Alright I see a gas station,  A big town that used to popular, it had a blockbuster back in the 1999s, Now some malls and a starbucks, “is that where you got this coffee from” John asked,  “Kinda, same flavoring and package. We give them our mail.“ she replied,  The cowboy walked out hearing people talk through the settlement, 

Someone had a tableleg armed and ready. as a weapon, Did they borrow John's weapons? He went outside and hopped on the horse. He checked the map, walked in the north  and moved to the east and right. Then we will get there. John was beside him,  The neighborhood looked ransacked or it was in terrible condition, like a hurricane or tornado came through, As ghouls walked after him while RUNNING.  John moved fast around with his blade up and down killing ghouls at their neck, their red blood came out.ripping their shirt.  Walking towards the gas station with coca-cola posters ripped apart  John asked “are we going to risk it?” Guess The cowboy said to let the horse stay put, The door was half open. A white sign said. <- HELP GHOULS ARE ATTACKING -  PLEASE HELP - > the ink was still wet fairly new as John rubbed it. He wrote interestingly but eloquently, John and the Cowboy walked in seeing 5 ghouls, John getting 2 at the back. I will shoot the 3 in my area, as John  killed the zombies in the back row area and the cowboy killed the 2 in the front. The room smelled like a dead farm animal rotting in weeks. A man crouch flinching back and forth, GOD GOD, YOU SAVED ME I WAS ABOUT TO DIE, EATING ME LEAVING MY BONES FRESH AND EMPTY, “you will become one of them, “ the cowboy said,  Here take anything for free They looked throughout the gas station, Broken microwaves, not important, They took lays chips for each other. Thank you, the cashier said, charismatic. Leaving a bell rang with tied aluminum cans with coins inside like some notifier. If someone opened up the door,  he hopped on the horse with John putting things in the leather satchel, the geiger counter clicked up and down,  walking on through the distance, “TROT” he said, making the horse faster.

 Walking on the world just looked empty with the sky being dark, stopping at a 4 street corner. He turned to the right seeing the town the Overseer told them, A water fountain was not working muggy and terribly working becoming somewhat of a pool. At a Mexican restaurant, A geiger counter clicked on his suit slowly, Huh, it would be alr-ight, He looked through a broken window, seeing soda bottles still in use,  Mexican coke and some vivid green, red and purple glass jarritos bottles,  ghoulish people  were in there,   coming out trying to attack, the Blockbuster sign still there covered by a big black sign nailed in the room was closed off.  “Guess we are at town now John, That's what she told me Its on map,” The ghouls broke throughout the doors with glass cuts on their body,  John help by slicing them to bits hitting with his rusty blade he owned, He got off the horse two clicks and to tell the horse to stay put. He tied his horse to the side 

He looked in the restaurant as some caps were open with a drink spilled out fizzing on tables, the Mexican restaurant was empty, with coke posters, while outside was more gloomy. Checking behind the register taking coins from the cash register. Bottles of rum,beer,wine and laid on the counters. He left to see the BLOCKBUSTER through a crack of a window, it was empty. Mold feels through with copper wires.  STARBUCKS but it was misspelled another settlement laid out on his map. The cowboy grabbed an ink pen and put an X on that area. He opened it seeing men and females, there were no kids,  BAKERY signs, canned beans at a trading post ammunition bullets and rounds with guns, the back kitchen became a shelter area for beds,  A man at the front said welcome to The LAST CUP. and very  small settlement to survive -, 

2 improved guards like a knight stared at the cowboy. They wore somewhat of a respirator mask, and used highlighters with red to make their eyes look like reddish demon eyes. If you get no water you get no coffee. “The smell of alcoholic beverages and coffee filled the air,”  A scavenger said in the back, "Is it fine if we stay here tonight? He gave 3 shiny coins to the owner for him and John to sleep, as The cowboy whispered to John,

“One more day” the horse fell asleep such as everyone else, they woke up in morning with a grey shiny working ventilation blowing the cowboys face, He squeezed his eyes short, He got off and grabbed his satchel and guns, He asked someone for a glass bottle, that was empty, “ I have one”, an old man said, replying We need a towel, lighter and gas, The guard asked him, are you making a molotov?, “Yes” to win a war threat” ‘’To destroy a threat”  The second guard asked the cowboy what breed is horse? "Quarter Horse that's not for sale” the cowboy said, He got the horse and checked his watch, Its around 4 am, John yawned, “this early” he asked “You want to win or lose” The cowboy explained “okay” as they walked off He but the Molotov bottles in his satchel, One more ride off i hope as John walked by, He looked back a the map,  a few more towns to head through seeing a water tower in text town, It was destroyed the big sign of the towns watertower, with paint falling off, looked sanskrit or somewhat arabic, broken destroyed rocks and  rubble destroyed on the road, with trucks and dead men with dead ghouls, “guess we don't need to kill them”  John said while walking through seeing 2 story houses and another church, with the white paint falling off screaming, Raiders contained the area, One smoked a cigarette another had rum slipping out of its hands, They saw the Cowboy “HEY!” as they grab a weapon, The Horse is ours now” If No, if do you want to die, “no” said the cowboy  John sliced the raiders head bleeding as zombies walked by, The Cowboy gave 12 shots to each zombies arms and legs, Telling the horse to trot, seeing a giant tower in the distance, white but shadowy, “TROT” he said he was seeing another town filled with houses,  THICk plywood with some garage doors half staying off the horses with some ghoul screaming upstairs,  still trotting, He got to the front of the institute, He saw a large fence with a code, “locked darn it” John said, Hold up, Its still armed, seeing 5 people with a full army suit and a clipped on geiger counter on the suit,  the Cowboy he whispered to John “silent follow as he was dropping of his horse, Stay put, they went to left near trees,  Grabbing his gun reloading, Shooting one man in the head, you want to slice the other man up? John said he is armed,  The Cowboy shoot him, Crippled his legs,  John grabbed his certain weapon slicing the man's head off,  killing him like they killed bad men in 1789, The front doors were locked, “Check his suit, “ The cowboy told John, The guard had silver skeleton keys as they put it throughout a hole “CLING-CLANG”  as the doors opened softly, John put his weapon down in an umbrella basket for now, He saw 2 soda machines,  PEPSI, COCA-COLA, Hold up John stated, He took a coin and dispensed a coke can, “CLANK” “you really wanted to do that?” The cowboy asked, “He laughed. Come on! It's funny, it's still in use!” They saw throughout a table with a glass period table of elements with real atoms, uranium, radium, oxygen, and more, The room tasted odd, Metallic and tasted like blood in the mouth,  Terminals screens with still on, The Cowboy sat down the leather satchel, 2 MOVs (MOVIES) on different screens the first and second computer, He started to hear clicking from his suit from the geiger counter, The building got radioactive fast, He took pills from the satchel for a few minutes and wore it after, and walked past, They both saw the problem, they used radioactive materials, causing a chemical reaction, destroying the world, They have become death, Like the first man to  make a bomb, They have become death destroyer of worlds, saying it slowly, he saw 2 vials, NEEDLES on the table, as seeing  a box of Dynatime by Nobel, John sat that on the floor, Okay, This can work,  they moved to towards a doctors office , seeing the crater, and unused vials, and written physics on a whiteboard, walking out The cowboy frontier saw an elevator shaft, 5 buttons glowed throughout the room,  pressed the lowest button Ø.  he did not know the meaning of that,  The bottom button of GROUND ZERO, the elevator flickered lights and  shook and took them slowly there, The doors opened slowly, loudly and shaking the shaft, Seeing the male physicists,  “Its been years” with their skin aged up dry aged paper, with white hairs balding. The cowboy took out a revolver, I just have a question putting them at a gunpoint, “John head back up, wire the TNT, As the cowboy put it up towards to Doctor Fleming's ear like an old telephone,  The Doctors were in a bunker, a ground zero safe zone like cold war, John tied up every part of the denomination and the lever to explode it outside, The Cowboy asked Fleming, What caused the Land to get disturbed by death?, Why did life want to end us, Accidents happen! he replied, “we used radioactive materials, The cure could of happen if we did not a theorist replied,” Addison said in the back bunkbed, by chips and a furnace, The cowboy responded “You can not do this, You remember bombs happened multiple times,  Some accidental like Chernoybl” Shooting the men the shaft, As a menace He grabbed the molotov”Here take this for cover” throwing it down burning there body into flames with smoke getting on the cowboys face as he went up to the top, John said I got the Explosion to start, Get back outside to start, "remember this will not end the war, It just will kill the men that started threats” The cowboy told, John added 4 blue copper wires next toward to his red copper wires, “rip off your shirt and stay back” “why? so?” said the cowboy,  “you can get burns “burns”  He ran back to his horse, took off his hat and gave eye cover, still seeing a hollow bottom area, John said Three ,Two, “DONT COUNTDOWN funny numbers, DO IT” “push” as he put down the lever and ran off towards the horse ripping a sleeve off and gave cover by the horse, A gigantic orange flash with smoke revealing with fire came through burning half the population of creatures of ghouls some still lived on, , Shaking the ground “shockwave” John said rocks broke apart with another shockwave, as towns saw it from miles, “they did it” surprised a smaller bomb killing the institute DEAD, the town was still ghoulish but people still live on, The Cow hopped on the saddlepad and pulled reins as they walked out towards towns of the ruins, “You almost killed yourself man, John said “Benjamin Franklin once said Join or die, this can be really similar to that problem,” The cowboy responded, “I guess man, I did weave my horse, The horse panted as he questioned, Those monsters, ghouls or bandits, died from a shiny bullet. “

The one with bandits murdered, They head straight towards The LAST CUP, They went towards the front door as the cowboy let the horse stay put,  opening the door-knob with a twist, The Cowboy jumped off the quarter horse, still seeing the fire in the distance, asking “Did You See it?” John asked, Everyone was surprised, a man read some important news in the back. saying, “Yes,”  The 2 men John and the Cowboy were sweating deeply, “The owner said Everything is free for a week” as the one officer smoke a cigar, The Cowboy took his sarsaparilla out, as he took a drink, “good stuff man” The main cowboy said and gave John a bottle, We should tell the other settlement, “yep” as they said that the temperature of ventilation blew towards their legs and arms, the fire on the candle and the smoke shook to the left and right, Lets go,  As he drove out back on the horse the cowboy  looked up seeing his demolished house, John said “stay with me” walking towards a few roads as it moved right , traffic lights broken, with taking time The Overseer open the door, Come in my office, She held a bottle of wine out of her fridge, He dropped off the horse, People looked at him like he was heroic, She pointed the room as “come in here” “you saved our soul “SOS” thank you 

It took around 3-4 days. He was sweating deeply like he was out from under the water . They used radioactive particles, “radium” “uranium” "some what of black-purple tinted antimatter” “ antimatter ? She questioned” John broke  and coughed into conversation.” I studied a little of that on break times in college, “Antimatter is a form of matter composed of antiparticles. Your bananas include antimatter giving off isotopes, he wrote on the map paper, with a pen, drawing out describing it“ and made a chemical reaction, I saw a crater deep, Now the Institute is just a white-greyish destroyed tower filled with gravestones and a radioactive cure, She passed down her coins, “a reward” hearing sounds of quarters, and coins, The Overseer grabbed a shiny glass, and put wine in and chugged it, John and the cowboy walked out, “your welcome,”A man towards to newsrack, signed new important sheets of paper, PEACE! THE WAR ENDED, EXPLOSION AT THE BLACKWOOD INSTITUTE TOWERS, drawing the towers and a giant dash of explosions, telling the story in the news, the world was still smoking, Burning” hoping on the horse going to Johns place, Then he tied the horse up dropping off, Closing the garage sounding like a shaking tin foil, looking at John's weapons shining from light, blades of 2  license plates with certain cuts, random axes, A giant rock axe, in his eyes and leathered goggles for weathering, , going upstairs to the room setting down a memory remember it , a memory that he will never lose“ They went to set to bed, taking off his geiger counter clip,  remembering the first the blast at the beginning start of this and the second fireball explosion for of what's destroyed.”

“That's it” “Anymore?”  That's all” The cowboy asked?   John replied The cowboy layed on the bed, not a problem sleeping with boots still on, drips came from a white sink with a blast destroying the white Ceramic.

Till now. Some new problems will come soon,—---- we will build a horse stable tomorrow, “thanks” Will we solve a new problem? Probably not, unless some new war like this would break out, we never thought this one would happen beforehand.

This will be our new history, “It is” “huh” John asked, “The settlement wrote news about us” The cowboy told him of what we ended of what somewhat death created, we can say we ended “the war” but not fully, 

John walked and  laid on the couch as the Cowboy laid in the bedroom, The satchel laid beside him with bottles falling out next to quarter, as they fell asleep in a heroic way, the lights became dim as the sun set down,

—THE END—


r/FictionWriting • • 4h ago

Write this when I was depressed. It has potential?

1 Upvotes

⸻

Once, atop the mountains, there lived a girl named Efilia.
People called her an orphan. She called herself free.
Her mind was as free as the winds, and her vision of the world was inspiring.
She always saw the good in things—and she was grateful.

As the days and nights passed, spring turned into summer, and a change stirred—not just in the world, but in Efilia herself.
An odd feeling came over her, like a puzzle missing one final piece. One moment it was there… and the next, it was gone.

She felt like she was floating in a glistening body of water that shimmered softly in the sun—until no light could be seen again.
Tears beamed down her cheeks as she whispered into the void:

“If a star shines with another like there’s no tomorrow,
and birds are drowning in their sleep together,
where is my beloved one?”

She felt alone—and she was alone.
No soul to offer love. No warmth. No kind words.
No matter how brightly the poor girl tried to shine, nothing could fill the void in her heart.

⸻

White as snow, featherlike—shapes and forms only the mind could imagine—Efilia was painting the beauty of the clouds across the powder blue sky.
From far away, she glimpsed something thin, black and white. She narrowed her eyes.

The storks. Of course.
They had returned—just like every balmy summer—to their homes.

And in that moment, a brilliant idea bloomed in Efilia’s colorful mind:

“A journey.”

She said farewell to the mountains… and set off to find the missing piece her heart longed for.

⸻

She ran through flowing grass, brushed past flowers and green leaves, not caring if her spotless white dress became dirty.
She was excited.

In an abandoned village of brown, crumbling houses with no windows, the air turned cold and heavy.
A sudden storm rose from nowhere. Rain soaked her bare feet.

Then she saw her.

A small girl stood with a dog by her side, looking straight at Efilia.
Without a word, the girl took her hand and led her toward a large grey castle.

Now the three of them were seeking shelter from the violent storm.

“Thank you for helping me,” Efilia said softly.
“I’m Efilia. May I know your name?”

No response.

Another loud crash of thunder startled the little girl, and in the next second, she threw herself into Efilia’s arms, hugging her tightly, her face buried in Efilia’s chest.
Their shivering bodies slowly warmed together in the embrace.

That night, they lay side by side in the castle, staring at the ceiling—ornately carved with angels and stars.

Still, not a word from the little girl.

She turned to Efilia and placed her small hand on Efilia’s mouth.
Then she gently shook her head left to right… and pointed at herself.

For the first time in her life, Efilia felt something new.
A wave of sadness swept over her.

A lonely child, with a dog as her only friend—and no voice to speak with.

That night, while the girl slept, Efilia knelt and prayed—tears streaking down her cheeks:

“Dear God, please… give her a voice.”

And her prayer was heard.

The next morning, Efilia awoke to laughter and barking.

“I’m Cece!” the little girl exclaimed, beaming with joy.

Efilia jumped in surprise—overjoyed.
But when she tried to speak… no sound came out.

That’s when she realized:
Her voice had been given to Cece.

With a silent hug, Efilia said goodbye—and continued her journey.

⸻

But this was only the beginning of her cruel destiny:

“Finding the light of one’s life.”

Weeks passed.

Eventually, Efilia reached an enchanting town.
Her eyes sparkled, and her pale cheeks were flushed with wonder.

White houses rose through the trees, golden alleys bloomed with flowers.
She heard music, laughter, dancing.

But across the square, her attention fixed on a boy.

He had long hair, green eyes, and a face full of freckles.
He sat alone on a chair—his expression sorrowful.

Later that night, she found him again, beneath a tree, staring at the moon.

She stood beside him.
He looked at her with curious, furrowed eyes.

She pulled out a piece of paper and wrote:

“What’s the matter? Why aren’t you dancing with the others?”

“I can’t hear,” he replied.

“I see,” she wrote. “I can’t speak.”

He smiled.

“Would you like to hear?” she scribbled.

“Tell me… how did you feel when you heard the music?”

“Happy,” he said softly.

“Then I guess that answers your question,” she wrote.

“I’m never happy because of this.”

Efilia left.

And once again, the light inside her dimmed.

⸻

The next morning, she returned to the square.

And there he was—dancing. Laughing.

She smiled faintly and walked on.

⸻

Months passed.

Now Efilia stood in a vast city beside the endless blue ocean.
She couldn’t hear or speak—but her eyes could still see beauty.

Golden buildings. Grey streets. Flowers in the parks.
People rushing left and right, everyone in a hurry.

She wandered until a garden stopped her.

Across the flowers, she saw a woman in a long white dress, holding a small sleeping child.
The woman was singing—or seemed to be—but Efilia could not hear her.

She wasn’t sad. Just… disappointed.
In all her travels, she still hadn’t found her beloved one.

Instead, she met only sorrowful souls.

The child had thin arms, pale lips, and dark circles under her eyes.

Clearly, the girl was sick.

Efilia left quietly.

Later, she passed a large castle lit by golden lights.

At the entrance stood a photograph—the same girl from the garden.

“Princess Laurie will soon return to the heavens.
Pray for her and her family.”

Candles flickered as people gathered in mourning.

Efilia walked slowly to the beach.

She lay in the soft sand.
The shimmering moon, the satin sky, the wind’s breath—they cooled her.

“Where is my soulmate?” she asked silently.

Her eyes closed, welcoming the dark.
Tears clung to her cheeks like frost.

She had been wishing to go home for what felt like forever.

With every breath, her mind drifted.
And her heart began to warm inside her chest.

“I am home,” she told herself.

And then, suddenly, a voice—not hers—whispered:

“You are home.”

She had searched for a soulmate.
But in the end, she understood:

She was the soulmate.

To every child who had lost something.

An angel who left heaven… to give joy to the broken.

A girl with a voice.
A boy with sound.
And a princess with a beating heart.


r/FictionWriting • • 4h ago

Novel Should I rewrite it?

1 Upvotes

Hey!

I wrote a coming-of-age horror last year, which I thought I had completed at 84,900 words. I was happy with it, I thought it was good, people that read it said they liked it, however I struggled to make an impact with literary agents.

I had renamed it since the first submission to something more catchy, and had already shortened it by 15k words from the original 99k word count.

Suddenly, I have become haunted with regret that I didn't write it in an entirely different way with more emphasis on the growing of the teenagers and the impact the monster had on them (think stranger things, IT). Also there's a whole section I'd like to remove due to repetition of similar incidents and start without a prologue that means going straight into the story to grip the reader.

Although I want to keep the plot the same, including the ending, and although it's already gone through four edits (including a proof read), should I consider the rewrite of the whole thing to give me the best chance possible of traditional publication.

I am currently writing my fourth manuscript, so time is tight (and I work full-time in a job in London). Would it be wise to devote my time to returning to my first project and almost starting again?

For reference:

1st book (this one) - Four drafts

2nd book - Three drafts

3rd book - one draft

4th book - incomplete.

None published.

I look forward to hearing thoughts.

Andy


r/FictionWriting • • 5h ago

Iterations - Little fictional storyline i made over a series of bus rides in this year.

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1 Upvotes

r/FictionWriting • • 9h ago

Science Fiction Purification

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2 Upvotes

r/FictionWriting • • 8h ago

Characters The Great Conceiver

0 Upvotes

He is the creator and guardian of the omniverse. He sees every moment of time in every universe in every multiverse all at once for all of time. He sees me writing this and he sees you reading this. His existence is canon to all realities, fiction or otherwise. He doesn't conform to any single religion or truth, because he created every religion and truth. He created entities like The One Above All, The Presence, or Azathoth because he was tired of governing every reality. Any character you or I can imagine will always be less powerful than him because nothing can be more powerful than him.


r/FictionWriting • • 11h ago

Fantasy Rate my story

1 Upvotes

Story

I strolled through the tranquil forest that I once strolled through in my youth the leaves snapped and crunched under my armour-clad boots as metal clashed with nature in a fierce battle each step I took left a mark-a mark in history

The silence wrapped around encasing me

Just then-rain-heavy rain

It hammered down like a plethora of arrows, the light bent and reformed before my eyes

It was simply divine, it danced in the wind as they slowly collided then smashed to the ground, they were once beautifully built by nature, but now they are fractured and broken, I stood there therapeutically, as rain dripped and danced on my armour-clad helmet, as if it were nature’s song

The armour I bore drank in the rain as though it belonged to it. Forged from a deep, obsidian-black metal, it carried a weight that was not just physical but ancient, as if every strike it had endured still lingered within it. Its surface, though dark, held a faint sheen—subtle reflections of the storm twisting across it like ghosts of light.

Across the chest plate and flowing down the limbs ran jagged markings of cold, luminous blue. They resembled veins of diamond buried beneath the surface, glowing faintly with each movement, pulsing softly like a heartbeat hidden beneath steel. Rain traced along these lines, catching the glow and scattering it, making the armour seem alive—breathing, watching, remembering.

Each plate overlapped the next with deliberate precision, layered like the scales of some great ocean beast. When I moved, they shifted with a low, restrained sound—metal whispering rather than clashing. The shoulders flared slightly outward, broad and commanding, giving me a silhouette that stood apart from the fragile forest around me. My gauntlets were ridged and reinforced, built not just to defend, but to crush, each finger encased in cold certainty.

The helmet crowned it all—angular, enclosed, and unforgiving. A narrow visor cut across the front, its darkness concealing any trace of humanity within. From its sides extended blade-like frills, rigid and segmented, curving back like the fins of a deep-sea predator. Rain streamed along their edges, gathering before spilling off in thin, deliberate lines, as if the storm itself respected their shape. With every drop, the helmet seemed less like armour and more like a creature awakened beneath the sky.

Beneath it, wrapped tightly around the lower half of my face, was a thick grey scarf. Its texture was rough, almost bushy, worn by time and weather. It softened nothing—only concealed. Beneath its folds lay old scars that crossed my jaw and cheek, hidden not out of shame, but indifference. The scarf fluttered faintly with each breath, a quiet contrast to the unyielding precision of the armour that surrounded it.

I continued and I left the forest as the rain stopped, I was alone in a barren field deprived of sustenance there laid a gargantuan old, ancient mountain, lonely , solitary , abandoned by nature herself

The wind here did not feel like wind—it felt like absence given form. It slid across the empty field with no warmth, no purpose, only the memory of movement. The ground beneath my boots had changed; the soft surrender of the forest had become fractured earth, cracked and tired, as if even the land had forgotten how to grow.

Before me, the mountain rose like a wound in the horizon. It did not belong to the sky, nor to the earth—it simply was, imposed upon the world long before anything had agreed to question it. Its surface was jagged and broken, carved by time rather than shaped by it, every ridge looking like an old scar that refused to fade.

The silence out here was different. In the forest, silence had been alive—watching, breathing, wrapped around me like a presence. Here, it was hollow. It did not embrace me. It simply followed, as if even sound itself had grown afraid to exist.

At my side, something else endured that silence with me.

My blade hung low, steady against my leg, as if it too understood the weight of this place. Its form was simple at a glance, but wrong in a way the world could not quite accept. Forged from the same abyssal black as my armour, it swallowed what little light dared to touch it, leaving only its edges to betray its shape.

Along its length ran a thin rim of cold blue—sharp, unwavering, like a line drawn by something that never hesitated. The glow was faint, yet constant, tracing the blade’s edge with an unnatural precision. It did not flicker like fire, nor shimmer like reflection. It existed—calm, deliberate, inevitable.

The metal itself felt older than the mountain before me. Not worn, not dulled—unchanged. As though time had tried, and failed, to leave its mark. When the wind passed over it, there was no sound, no whisper of steel. It did not sing. It did not hum. It remained silent, as if noise was beneath it.

My hand rested against the hilt, fingers brushing the grip wrapped in dark, weathered binding. It was firm, familiar—an extension rather than a tool. The guard was minimal, almost non-existent, offering no ornament, no flourish. The weapon did not need to prove itself.

For a moment, the blue edge caught the empty light of the barren sky, and the glow sharpened—just slightly. Not enough to illuminate, but enough to remind.

And something else did too.

A shift—barely there. Not a sound, not a movement, but a disturbance in the stillness, like the air itself had been touched by intent.

I did not turn.

It came anyway.

A figure broke from the emptiness behind me, fast—desperate, silent in its approach but loud in its purpose. Steel met the air, aimed for where my neck would have been a heartbeat ago.

But the world had already moved.

My hand tightened.

The blade rose.

There was no clash, no drawn-out struggle—only a single motion, clean and absolute. The blue edge traced a brief arc through the hollow air, precise as a thought that had already been decided.

The attack ended before it began.

The figure staggered past me, momentum carrying it forward as if it had not yet understood what had happened. For a moment, it remained standing—caught between action and consequence.

Then it fell.

Silence returned instantly, swallowing the moment whole. No echo. No aftermath. Just the same hollow stillness, unchanged.

I lowered the blade.

The faint blue along its edge dimmed once more, returning to its quiet, patient glow.

Behind me, the presence was gone—as if it had never belonged here to begin with.

Ahead, the mountain remained.

Unmoving. Waiting.

So I climbed.

Each step was deliberate, the fractured stone resisting me as if it rejected the idea of being touched. Loose rock shifted beneath my boots, sliding away into nothingness below, yet I continued, carving a path where none wished to exist. The higher I rose, the thinner the world felt—like I was stepping beyond something meant to hold me.

Time did not pass here. It stretched.

At the summit, there was no triumph—only stillness.

And there, at the peak…

A box.

It did not belong.

Simple in shape, ancient in presence, it rested upon the stone as though it had been waiting—not placed, not abandoned, but left. Its surface was worn, edges softened by age, yet untouched by decay. No dust gathered upon it. No wind dared disturb it.

I approached.

For a moment, even the hollow silence seemed to hesitate.

My hand reached forward, armour dimly reflecting the pale sky, and with a slow, unspoken understanding… I opened it.

Inside lay something entirely different from the world around me.

A tall, conical hat with a wide, circular brim and a sharply pointed crown. It was woven from bamboo or straw, each strand carefully bound together, forming a pattern both simple and precise. Despite its fragile appearance, it carried a quiet resilience—made not for war, but for endurance.

The material bore the memory of rain and sun alike, built to shield rather than to strike. It was something worn by those who walked long paths—farmers beneath endless skies, monks beneath silent journeys… and, once, warriors who had learned when not to be seen.

It did not glow. It did not hum.

Yet it held presence.

I stood there for a moment, the wind brushing past me, the mountain unmoving beneath my feet. Then, slowly, I reached upward.

The helmet came first.

The finned, blade-like frills caught the empty light one last time as I lifted it free. For a brief second, the world felt… quieter. More exposed. The scarf beneath shifted slightly as the cold air touched it, brushing against skin long hidden behind steel.

Without ceremony, I lowered the helmet to my side.

Then I took the hat.

It was lighter than expected.

I placed it upon my head.

The wide brim cast a shadow over my face, merging with the grey scarf, concealing what little remained visible. The sharp, imposing silhouette of armour was softened—not weakened, but changed. The warrior beneath the storm had become something more distant… more unreadable.

The wind moved again.

This time, it caught the edge of the hat, and for the first time since I had entered this barren place… something shifted.

Not the world.

But me.

The blade remained at my side. The mountain still stood.

But the figure that now stood at its peak was no longer just a thing of metal and memory.

It was something quieter.

And far more dangerous..

I did not remain at the summit.

The mountain had given what it intended to give. Nothing more.

So I turned, and I descended.

The path down was no easier, yet it no longer resisted me. Stone shifted, dust slipped, but my steps were certain. The hat’s wide brim caught the dying light, its shadow steady over my scarf-covered face, while the faint blue veins in my armour pulsed softly beneath it—like something ancient adjusting to something new.

The barren field stretched once more before me. Empty. Endless. Forgettable.

But I knew where I was going.

Home.

Not a place of comfort—only of purpose.

The cave revealed itself slowly, carved into the earth as though the world had once tried to swallow it and failed. Its mouth was jagged, uneven, dark beyond reason. No light escaped it. No life approached it.

Yet I entered without hesitation.

Inside, the air was still—thick with the scent of metal, ash, and something older. The walls bore marks of time and work alike, scorched and scratched, shaped not by nature, but by persistence.

At the heart of it stood the anvil.

Silent. Waiting.

I set the helmet down beside it.

For a moment, I simply looked at it—the angular shape, the blade-like frills, the cold design that had hidden me from the world for so long. Rain no longer traced its edges. Wind no longer tested its form.

It had served its purpose.

Now it would become something else.

The forge answered when I willed it.

Flame rose—not violently, but steadily, as though it had always been there, waiting to be remembered. The light flickered across the cave walls, casting long, shifting shadows that bent and stretched like echoes of past battles.

I placed the helmet within.

At first, nothing.

Then… change.

The obsidian-black metal began to glow faintly, the blue veins within it brightening, pulsing harder—resisting. For a moment, it felt as though the armour itself refused to yield, clinging to the shape it had always known.

But time had never left its mark on it.

I would.

Slowly, deliberately, the metal softened. Its rigid edges blurred, its form collapsing inward as heat stripped it of identity. The frills bent, folded, then disappeared into the molten mass, their sharpness lost to something more fluid—more adaptable.

The blue light did not fade.

It spread.

Like veins unravelling, dissolving into the liquid metal, becoming something no longer bound by lines or structure.

When it was ready, I took it from the flame.

The molten metal moved like heavy water—dark, luminous beneath the surface. It did not drip. It flowed, as though guided by something unseen.

I brought the hat forward.

For the first time, something so simple met something so forged.

And I poured.

The liquid metal spread across the woven surface, seeping into the bamboo strands without consuming them, coating without destroying. The hat did not burn. It endured—just as it was meant to.

The obsidian sheen settled over it, darkening its form while preserving its shape. The blue glow traced along the edges of the weave, slipping between fibres like threads of light binding it together.

Then, from the sides…

The excess fell.

But it did not fall away.

It stretched.

Thin strands of molten metal extended downward, cooling as they lengthened, forming into delicate yet unbreakable chains. Link by link, they shaped themselves, each one precise, each one intentional. They hung from the brim in uneven lengths, swaying slightly as they solidified, catching the forge’s light in faint blue reflections.

Not decoration.

Not armour.

Something between.

When it was done, I lowered my hands.

The forge dimmed. The cave returned to its quiet stillness.

I lifted the hat once more.

It was heavier now—but not burdensome.

Stronger—but not rigid.

The chains whispered softly as they moved, brushing against one another with a faint, hollow sound—like distant echoes of something long gone.

I placed it upon my head.

The brim cast its shadow once more. The scarf remained. The armour beneath still pulsed.

But now…

With each subtle movement, the chains swayed and sang in quiet, metallic tones, framing the silence rather than breaking it.

The old helmet was gone.

Not destroyed.

Remembered.

Reformed into something that did not hide what I was—

But changed how the world would see it.


r/FictionWriting • • 1h ago

Novel Using AI to help with descriptive words?

• Upvotes

I have almost written a book. The plot. The characters, everything is from my own brain that I have thought about over a year. I have changed the plot when I felt like it started to go in the wrong direction, and even created multiple relationships between the characters (family, friends, lovers)

My problem, I don't have a big vocabulary. I didn't do any form of writing degree, or past experience (apart from being a play writer which doesn't involve many descriptive words)

I don't want to keep reusing the same descriptive words, if there's a forest in one chapter and a different forest in another, i struggle to describe them differently.

So overall, before I potentially ruin some hard work. Is it cheating if I used AI to help me with descriptive words? Given the basis that the scene and situation is already written?

(Given that after double checking it the descriptive words actually make sense situationally)

Thoughts?


r/FictionWriting • • 12h ago

Critique Can anyone help me review this first chapter?

1 Upvotes

I don't know if this is the type of novel you guys are reading on this subreddit. But after you read this chapter, what are you guys thinking?

Chapter 1

The doctor had given me four months. Three weeks already slipped by. The men who shattered my ribs gave me three days to come up with fifty thousand rupees, and that deadline passed two days ago. One night left, and nothing but a smooth, polished wall standing between me and the money I didn't have.

The wall was even taller than it looked. By the time I got one hand over the top, then the other, my lungs could no longer pretend everything was fine. I hung there, the bruised area of my ribs scraping against the brickwork. Teeth clenched I dropped down onto the grass.

On this side of the wall, the rain fell harder. The alleyway lay empty, submerged in darkness, and the sound of water striking the pavement filled my ears. At the far end of the alley, leaving the city behind, stood the house.

"Come quickly," Isak whispered from behind.

He was already there. Three days earlier he'd shown up at my apartment with a plan and a broad smile. I agreed to it—after all, he was the only person who ever accepted me exactly as I was. He needed money for his mother's medicine; I needed money for the men who broke my ribs. Neither of us was going to get it by being smart. I walked toward him and reached the side of the house.

My reflection appeared in the window. I looked away. I didn't want to look at the sunken cheeks or the beard I hadn't trimmed in weeks.

Isak tossed a dark, cheap scarf at me. It landed in my hand before I thought to catch it.

"What's this for?"

"What do you think?" He was already tying a cloth around his own face, pulling it up over his nose. "Did you think we were walking in there with our faces showing?"

"You didn't say anything about masks."

"I didn't think I had to. What kind of thief are you?"

A lousy one, clearly. The kind who wouldn't even think to bring a mask for a robbery. The cloth went up over my nose and mouth, and the face in the window vanished with them.

"The windows aren't locked," Isak said, his voice muffled. "This should be pretty easy."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

"You don't need to be afraid! This is the house of a retired government official; wealthy people always hide their money somewhere."

"That's the stupidest thing you've said all month."

"Maybe. But it's still the truth."

Before I could argue, he turned the handle of the back door, and it swung open with a soft, creaking sound. A small red light blinked above the door frame.

"A camera," I said.

But he was already inside. "Too late now."

I hesitated—knowing the camera was recording, that entering meant being captured on film—but then, after a quick glance at the scarf covering my face, I followed him inside.

The moment the door closed behind us, the air shifted. The house smelled of dust, stale coffee, and something else—something I couldn't quite identify. The scent made the inside of my nose itch.

As I took another step into the hallway, a pain flared behind my eyes. It started mild, then sharpened—though, unlike usual, it didn't keep intensifying. It spiked suddenly, then faded just as quickly, leaving me stopped in my tracks, one hand against the wall to steady myself.

"What is it?" Isak whispered.

"Nothing." I could have turned back then. The camera was one reason, the house itself another—yet I kept walking.

The living room must have once been beautiful—old sofas, wooden cabinets, photographs adorning every wall. The kind of room where everything had been bought back when the owners still thought life would go the way they planned. I don't know why that bothered me.

Isak stopped and pointed toward the wall.

Gold-colored medals, certificates, photographs of a man in uniform—some from his youth, some from his later years, others showing him standing alongside fellow officers.

"This is the home of a retired police officer," I said.

My fingers were gripping the doorframe tightly; I hadn't even realized it. Behind his mask, Isak turned pale, his hand moving to the back of his neck.

"We're in real trouble, aren't we?" he asked.

"We're leaving."

"Wait... trust me—"

"You said the same thing back when the warehouse exploded."

"Why do you keep bringing that up?"

"Because it exploded."

Isak almost smiled. "This time will be different. I promise."

His hand was still holding mine. The medals on the wall behind him—the man who had spent his entire life studying how people like us operate. The fifty thousand rupees sat in my head, and the men demanding it, and Ronan, sitting in that hospital chair with his hand clenched around the armrest when he heard the word 'tumor.' Then I pulled my hand free and walked deeper into the house. Isak was already moving ahead; money had never come looking for me, so the time had come for me to go looking for it.

Halfway down the corridor there was a faint, grating sound. We froze—Isak's hand tightened on my sleeve—but the house stayed silent after that. After a moment, I let out a breath and kept walking.

Somewhere in the darkness, an old clock was ticking away. A glance at it—running, but the time it showed was wrong. Further on, against a wall, we found a desk—an old wooden piece with locked drawers. The only thing in the entire house that was locked.

"Doesn't this seem a bit suspicious?" Isak asked.

"Try to be useful for once in your life."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

I knelt down and set to work with a thin metal tool from my pocket, while Isak stood over me, keeping an eye on the door. Neither of us spoke as I worked. With a sharp click, the lock gave way, and I slowly pulled the drawer open.

Inside, nothing but an old piece of paper. On it, drawn in ink that had faded to a brownish hue, was a mask—a full-face mask with two horns curving outward from either side.

I stared at it for a moment, unable to comprehend what I was even looking at. The paper felt warm in my hand, and the lines of the drawing appeared unnervingly sharp. But there was no time to dwell on this; I had come here for money, and this certainly wasn't money.

"What the hell is this?" I tossed it aside and turned back to the drawer.

Nothing else inside but a few documents. I looked at Isak, my expression one of helplessness. He said nothing. For a moment, the house was submerged in silence—a silence shattered by the sound of sirens.

Faint at first, the sound drew steadily closer, growing so loud the windows began to rattle. Along with the noise came flashes of red and blue light, sweeping across the walls, the floor, over both of us. We stood there, caught in the glare, as if trapped in the beam of a searchlight. Before I could see anything, I heard the sound of cars pulling up in front of the house.

My hand shot out and grabbed Isak's jacket. I pulled him toward the door, and—in a voice that didn't even sound like my own—screamed, "Run!"

We ran. Sirens wailed, echoing through the walls, accompanied by flashing red and blue lights.

I froze halfway down the hallway. Still clutching Isak's jacket, standing there, sensing the police were somewhere inside the house behind me—yet I couldn't move!

Then a whisper reached my mind, bypassing my ears entirely:

[SENKI]

My chest tightened, and my hand flew to my throat instantly. The voice had spoken my name—not as a mere word, but with the familiarity of someone who had known me a long time. And yet, no one in this house was supposed to know my name.

Isak gripped my arm. "What are you doing? We have to go—now!"

But even though I wanted to run, my legs refused to move.

[SENKI]

The whisper came again—louder, much closer.

A glance toward the last room at the end of the hallway. The door was slightly ajar, and a faint, red light glowed from within. My mind screamed at me to run, but my legs stayed rooted to the spot. I tried again, and nothing happened.

Before I even realized I had reached out, my hand had landed on the doorframe. I pressed my fingers deep into the wood, fighting with all my might to keep from entering that room—but then my grip began to loosen, one finger at a time. First the index finger—curling away from the wood as if it had received a command I never gave—followed by the middle finger, then the rest. I watched, helpless, as my own hand betrayed me. I tried to clamp it shut again, but I couldn't.

Isak's hold slipped from my sleeve. He called my name once more—this time, the word reached me. I wanted to call back, but my mouth would not open.

I could hear his footsteps receding down the hallway. I felt like weeping. I didn't blame him.

Then, without asking for my permission, my hands opened the door to the room.

Inside the darkened space, an old wooden chest sat in the corner, surrounded by a red light that flickered like a dying flame.

I crossed the room, knelt beside it, and placed my hand upon the lid.

The moment my fingers touched the wood, a jolt of cold surged through my palm and up my arm—and suddenly, every ache in my body fell silent. The bruises those men had inflicted on my ribs, my swollen knee, the headache that had lived behind my eyes for a year—everything vanished in the time it took to draw a single breath.

Fingers against my ribs—nothing. I stood motionless on the floor of the stranger's house. I knew the police were outside, knew they could burst into the room at any second—yet I felt no urge to move. I had forgotten what it felt like to just... not hurt.

I opened the box.

Inside lay a shattered half-mask—smooth and dark—split in two by a jagged, winding crack. From within it, a red light pulsed rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

[SENKI]

The voice was clearer now; it emanated from within my own head.

The sound was my name, clear as day, but the characters around it belonged to a language I had never encountered. They bypassed my ears entirely, etched directly into my brain.

Suddenly, words materialized before my eyes.

[CONSCIOUSNESS SYNCHRONIZATION: 2%]

[HOST: SENKI]
[PHYSICAL CONDITION: CRITICAL]
[NEURAL DAMAGE: 87%]
[MASK INTEGRATION: 1%]
[ABILITY: UNKNOWN]

Eighty-seven percent. My legs felt as though they were giving way, and my breath caught in my throat. The words lingered in the air a moment too long—long enough for me to notice something else beneath them: a line of text, too small to decipher. It vanished before I could even attempt to read it.

My hands had opened the box—just as they might open a door or pick up a cup—but this time, I had given no such command. I realized the footsteps in the corridor were drawing closer.

I didn't know what the box was. Didn't know what it might do to me once I took it out of this house. All I knew was the pain was gone—gone for the first time in a year—and I wasn't letting it come back.

Before I ran, I grabbed the box.

I emerged from the room with the box tucked under my arm. Isak had reached the middle of the hallway—near the back door—and turned around at the sound of my voice; his face had gone pale.

"What are you doing?" he shouted. "Move!"

I moved. With the police behind me and Isak in front, the hallway seemed to blur and recede. I followed him through the back door and into the garden, where the cold air struck my face and the rain poured down harder than before. Suddenly, a wall loomed ahead; I slammed into it at full speed, throwing one hand up, then the other. This time, nothing mattered—because I felt no pain. I swung one leg over the top of the wall, where Isak was already halfway across. The smile had vanished from his face, and he was breathing heavily. Together, we leaped to the other side, where a bike stood ten meters away.

Isak reached it first and tried to start the engine, but it wouldn't fire. He tried again—nothing happened.

"Come on!" he urged.

On the third attempt, the engine roared to life. I had already jumped on behind him. For a fleeting moment, I thought we might actually escape, but that hope began to fade the instant a second police car rounded the corner. It came from the direction we were heading; the headlights shone directly into our faces. Isak had to swerve, the bike wobbled beneath us, and I nearly lost my grip on the box. He steadied the bike and turned left onto the next street, where a third police car was parked—its doors just opening.

Isak hit the brakes, the bike skidded sideways, and for a moment, neither of us moved.

"Get on the ground," one of the officers commanded. "Get on the ground, now."

Isak glanced back at me over his shoulder—in that instant, I could see his regret. Regret for the plan, for the house, for dragging me into it all. He said nothing, just looked at me, then took his hands off the handlebars and raised them.

I got off the bike and raised my hands as well. We both knelt on the wet pavement; I placed my hands behind my head and stared at the asphalt, listening to the sound of boots approaching us.

One of the officers reached me first. He was a man in his forties with thick hands and a face like a clenched fist; he yanked the scarf from my face. The fabric was cold and damp, it fell away and left my bare skin exposed to the chilly night air. The officer looked at me, then at Isak—whose mask had been pulled away—and back at me; his lips curled.

"Idiots," he said. He hauled me to my feet and shoved me toward the car. Through the window, I saw a young officer holding the box; I watched as he placed it into the trunk of the second car.

Then the trunk slammed shut, and the pain returned—full force, worse than before. I doubled over, but the officer ordered me to walk upright.

End of Chapter 1.


r/FictionWriting • • 12h ago

The New story is here

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 😊

I hope you’re all doing well.

I wanted to share something special with you. I’ve recently published my debut novel, Forever Is Just A Word, and it means a lot to me because I’ve put so much time, effort, and heart into writing it.

If you enjoy reading stories about love, loss, betrayal, hope, and the strength to start again, I’d be really happy if you checked it out.

Your support would genuinely mean a lot to me. Even if you’re not a regular reader, I hope you’ll take a moment to have a look at my book.

Thank you so much! ❤️📚

To Get Your Copy From Here

Amazon :- https://amzn.in/d/00HpPFi0

Flipkart :- https://dl.flipkart.com/s/vOHvBdNNNN


r/FictionWriting • • 13h ago

Iterations - Little fictional storyline i made over a series of bus rides in this year.

1 Upvotes

Premise: A post-apocalyptic, Lovecraftian world built around the idea of “Iterations.”

Human civilization follows a natural cycle of roughly 10,000 years, ending in an apocalypse before beginning again.

Iteration 99, the setting of the story.

Class systems and social hierarchies.

Borrowed themes from:

Cyberpunk — corporate control

Fallout — post-apocalyptic settings

Adventure Time — repeating history

Metal Gear Solid — private military companies (PMCs)

 

POLITICAL SUBPLOT:

 

The Union, an alternate version of the United States, is divided into districts. Its cities are scattered across a vast, harsh landscape of deserts, plains, and tundra. Steampunk airships and dirigibles share the skies with cassette-futurist and early-1980s-to-1990s technology. Settlements exist beyond city walls, where PMCs often operate beyond government scrutiny.

Wild West-inspired settlements and landscapes

Gunrunners and couriers, known as Dust-biters or Scraps

Rogues: PMC defectors who still wear their former company colors

Marauders: violent, unstable outlaws, sometimes driven to madness by heatstroke or drugs

Immigrant outposts, particularly those populated by Middle Eastern and Turkish communities

 

Advanced technology is rare and heavily restricted. Microcontrollers, megahertz chips, unified RAM, technologies that could enable modern AI, and integrated nuclear-weapons programs are forbidden, with severe physical punishment for violations.

 

District 52 is the main setting for the first half of the story.

Wide roads and 1980s-style cars with some design elements from the 2000s.

Tall buildings and small dirigibles fill the lower skies. Above them, PMC airships hover near the clouds, ready to deploy shock troops when unrest breaks out.

Despite their strong aerial presence, PMC aircraft are unreliable, limiting their use.

 

PMCs

Kessler: Personnel wear slim gas masks, long coats, helmets, and lightweight weapons; their appearance varies by rank and role. Kessler Security Contracting Co. originally took over a factory that mass-produced exterminator masks. The masks proved useful in chemical warfare, helping trigger conflicts between French Canadia and the Union involving poison gas, trench warfare, and the development of modern airships. In the 1960s, Kessler funded research into the Union’s first atomic bomb, contributing to a Cold War fought largely through espionage and proxy conflicts. A near-dirty-bomb incident in Miami led to city walls being built and access to the harsh, but inhabitable, wasteland being restricted. After Kessler helped defuse the crisis, the Union brought the company into its military operations. Politicians eventually began using Kessler to carry out covert actions without the political consequences, gradually sidelining the official military.

 

105th Collies

 

During the Second Proxy World War in the 1940s, defectors from Europe, the Union, Kieva, and Albian (Britain) formed a secretive network of operatives known as the 105th Collies. In the 1960s and 1970s, rumors claimed they were replacing politicians who died unexpectedly, though government-backed investigations dismissed the allegations. By the early 1990s, most people believed the Collies were extinct or in hiding, while conspiracy theories claimed they still manipulated elections and legislation. In 1993, District 52 Director Victor Halden shut down all investigations, calling them “a disappointing waste of effort and funds.”

 

Other PMCs

 

The Eastern Wars displaced many Middle Eastern and Eastern European refugees. In 1976, Director Clifford Benedict offered them free immigration and protected settlements outside the cities. His successor later revoked the policy, prompting riots and armed uprisings across the East Coast. Kessler and Union Army special forces suppressed the violence while still operating as equals. Some survivors formed unofficial PMCs, including Valencia Contracting and Salam Security. These groups operate in the largely lawless territories beyond the major cities, where authorities often overlook them.

 

Social classes and slang

 

Couriers are commonly called Dust-biters because they transport goods across dangerous plains, deserts, and tundra. In colder regions, they may be called Snowshoes.

 

Corporate elites are known as Plate-lickers or Silver Spoons. They control PMCs, genetic-testing programs, food safety, and the production and distribution of essential goods.

 

Blindeyes are couriers who also work outside the law. They steal technology from PMC warehouses and may sell the same parts back before anyone notices they are missing.

 

Preachers are government-sponsored “missionaries” sent to settlements beyond the city walls. They promote urban life while discouraging potential threats to the cities, often imposing the government’s version of happiness on nomadic communities.

 

Patchers, or Highwires, are technicians who illegally repair or modify circuit boards, microchips, and other advanced technology. Many live in the Rust Grid, a vast buried city beneath the flatlands between Districts 52 and 58, which are hostile toward one another. The city is guarded by bulky, primitive drones secretly developed by Kessler engineers. Tethered to wires across the high ceiling, the drones have limited mobility; busy blocks may contain four to eight of them. The 105th Collies are the main power in the Rust Grid and occasionally reveal themselves to discourage interference.

 

Chirpers, also called Mouths, work in media and culture as filmmakers, actors, writers, comedians, debaters, poets, and more. Many form groups to share ideas, create propaganda, or produce art. Their entertainment helps maintain public morale, and production often increases during periods of tension to distract people from events beyond the cities.

 

 

ITERATION SUBPLOT: 

 

Every human civilization ends abruptly after roughly 10,000 years, often through nuclear war, mass poisoning, or another global catastrophe. A small number of survivors lose their memories and eventually rebuild civilization.

 

Vorons are tiny, four-dimensional subatomic particles sometimes called the “DNA of time.” Their density in an organism is believed to determine its level of life and awareness. Around 750,000 Vorons per cell may indicate intelligence; approximately 2.3 million Vorons per cell (vpc) is thought to produce sapience—a soul, consciousness, and discernment. Humans are the only known sapient species, though some who study the Iterations believe another existed during the first cycle over a million years ago.

 

When a sapient organism dies, its Vorons disperse through space and may later be reused in another creature, forming the basis of reincarnation in this universe. Across Iterations, the same soul may reappear in different lives, sometimes repeating similar actions in the same place and year. Here, history does not merely rhyme; it repeats.

 

Each Iteration follows a broad pattern of rise, development, collapse, and renewal, though its technology and culture vary. One cycle may be steampunk, cyberpunk, atompunk, analog, or digital. After each apocalypse, humanity begins again with primitive tools and gradually rebuilds until the cycle’s end becomes inevitable.

 

 

 

 

MAIN CHARACTERS: 

 

Elliot Thatcher

 

Elliot Thatcher was born in 1973 and works as a courier, often taking illegal jobs as a Blindeye and stealing from PMC warehouses or technology workshops. His father was a courier and was killed during the Eastern Wars; his mother, a primary-school teacher, was imprisoned and later released on the East Coast, unable to reconnect with him. Elliot grew up in a public foster institution and ran away at 17. He later left college to follow his father’s path. Repeatedly detained for petty theft, he usually spent only a few days in jail. In 1994, at 21, he lives in an apartment complex on the city’s eastern edge. His closest connections are childhood friend Pace Romano, Pace’s sister Salem, neighbor Camille Navarro, and several information brokers.

 

Camille Navarro

 

Camille Navarro was born in Barcelona in 1973 and moved to the Union with her family at age nine, near the end of the Eastern Wars. She attended school with Elliot and graduated from a prestigious university at 23. After her family circumstances changed, she moved into his building. Their relationship is tense and full of arguments, though they still care about one another. Camille interns in District 52’s architecture department, hoping to improve people’s lives. She values peace and altruism but is repeatedly drawn into morally complicated situations.

 

Pace Romano

 

Pace Romano, born the same year as Elliot, dropped out of college during his first year and started a business with his younger sister, Salem, modifying vehicles and handling technology of questionable legality. Elliot supplies them with parts in exchange for a small weekly payment. Because authorities suspect Pace of more illegal activity than Elliot, he takes precautions to avoid detection.

 

Salem Romano

 

Salem Romano, born in 1975, is Pace’s quieter younger sister and handles most of the technical work in their shop while Pace and Elliot negotiate. She earned degrees in business, engineering, and biochemistry at a young age. After the business became profitable, she and Pace moved into a vacant building beside Elliot’s apartment. Despite her intelligence, Salem struggles with insecurity about her parents’ expectations, caution, insensitivity, and a quick temper. She remains close to Pace and Elliot.

 

Victoria “Vic” Alira

 

Victoria “Vic” Alira was born in 1972 in the southern coastal region of the Australian Dust-lands, a term for sparsely inhabited dry regions across places such as the Middle East, Africa, and Mongolia. Her birth parents gave her up for adoption at age five, and she grew up with cold, disapproving adoptive parents. She remained closest to her two sisters and older brother. Vic moved to the Union’s Pacific region at 19 and eventually settled in District 52. After becoming acquainted with Elliot and Camille in her early twenties, she turned her wanderlust into work as an information broker for their courier jobs and others.

 

Main Story:

 

As time stretches and the Iteration cycle repeats, Vorons begin to cluster and bring objects and beings from past Iterations into the present. These anomalies cause phasing, visual glitches, and other distortions. One of the first is an android known as Jack.

 

Jack was built in the 42nd Iteration in a 1940s-noir version of New York, where biotechnology dominates the American Empirical Republic (AER). Researchers used human brain cells to give him human-level intelligence and near-sapience. Named Lazarus by lead researcher Dr. Tobias Kolavenko, Jack has amber-lit eyes and a mouth that functions as both audio output and exhaust. After months of painful experiments, AER special forces raided the lab and killed its staff. Jack escaped his reinforced enclosure and killed the remaining operatives. Grieving the researchers he regarded as his creators, he later became an illegal bounty hunter and adopted the name Jack, along with a broad-brimmed hat, long coat, and boots to conceal his identity. When Voron anomalies begin, Elliot glimpses him during a nighttime raid in a blizzard. Days later, Vic finds Jack injured and brings him to the shop, where the rest of the crew meets him.

 

The Director of District 52, Victor Halden

 

Victor Halden, Director of District 52, is cocky, humorous, power-hungry, and somewhat unstable. His rivalry with District 58 Director Susan Brownell leads him to blame her and her thriving cities for many of his problems. He dislikes confronting people above him and routinely appeases Kessler generals, the Union’s head Director (the President), and his own supervisors. He also ensures that details of major incidents are redacted.

 

 

The story follows the crew through episodic adventures involving gunrunning, stealth, humor, and contracts to help people. Beneath these smaller stories, tensions between Kessler, the Union, the Huang Republic, Kieva, and other powers threaten another Cold War. The creation of dirty bombs containing Chernovor—a Voron-dense mineral made from depleted uranium and phosphorus—could end Iteration 99. The use of just five bombs would plunge Earth into permanent darkness and prevent humanity from returning.

With humanity’s factions deeply divided and distrustful, the crew must find a way to end the Iteration cycle before it destroys them.

 

 

 

 

The central twist concerns Elliot’s identity and his connection to previous Iterations.

 

 

The ambiguous nature of the Iterations’ origin remains central to the story, yet it should contain these ideas: 

 

Like many people, Elliot has lived different lives across multiple Iterations. A soul’s role may be filled by another version of that person in a later cycle, though the origin and meaning of this pattern remain open to interpretation.

 

Elias Mercer:

 

Iteration 0 took place roughly one million years before Iteration 99 in a world much like our own.

In the 1960s, Soviet leader Edgar Reznov became internationally known for his work in peace, biotechnology, and medicine. His research eventually had unintended and devastating consequences.

 

By the mid-1970s, Reznov’s researchers were using chemical mutation and gene therapy to create people resistant to disease. These modified humans looked almost ordinary but tended to have pale, gray-tinted hair, unusual inherited accents, and reconstructed genomes. They were often taller and stronger, reproduced more quickly, and were more likely to have multiple births, but lived shorter lives—around 60–65 years rather than 75. Once the public learned about them, many called them “sub-humans,” “monsters,” or “God’s Secondaries.”

 

Reznov stepped down in 1982 and was succeeded by Mikhail Voronin. In 1984, Voronin launched the Integration Campaign to help the growing modified population join society. Reclaiming the insult “God’s Secondaries,” he called them Secondaries and placed them in public-facing roles in advertisements and city campaigns. Acceptance grew, although prejudice remained.

 

In 1992, Voronin settled many Secondaries in Russian-occupied East Africa, where new settlements were needed amid the threat of foreign occupation. That year, biologists discovered that Secondaries could no longer reproduce genetically with unmodified humans. Leaked documents called them “Homo aberrans” (“Deviated Man”), and the revelation sparked worldwide riots and killings. Voronin responded by protecting the settlements and appointing a young survivor, Elias Mercer, as his apprentice to demonstrate that the two populations could coexist.

The discovery leaked to the public, and documents referring to the group as “Homo aberrans” (“the Deviated Man”) intensified the backlash. Riots broke out worldwide, and Secondaries were killed across the globe. Voronin responded by sending military protection to their province and choosing Elias as his apprentice, hoping to demonstrate that the two populations could coexist.

 

Voronin became a father figure to Elias, but on September 18, 1999, European and American radicals attacked Secondary communities, killing and imprisoning civilians. Voronin’s efforts to stop the violence failed. Later, raiders attacked Elias’s village, killing several of his allies, including children. Traumatized and furious, Elias decided to retaliate against humanity for the persecution of his people.

 

Elias secretly ordered bombings of Union offices and helped seize Russian military equipment in the province. The conflict escalated as other countries intervened and Secondary forces conquered nearby territories. A U.S. invasion of Africa’s west coast triggered a wider war. After witnessing the resulting mass deaths, Elias lost faith in humanity and ordered global dirty-bomb launches, believing that shared extinction would force all life into a single, equal state.

 

As the launch began, Elias went to a helipad to initiate the opening of the world’s missile silos. Voronin confronted him, and Elias stabbed him. With the launches underway and the world facing destruction, Elias regretted killing the man who had raised him, yet remained convinced that his plan would end humanity’s divisions.

The plan ultimately fails to end the cycle. When the world dies, its Vorons disperse across Earth and remain in stasis, allowing the same process of collapse and renewal to repeat without an apparent way to stop it.

 

The Catalyst

The Catalyst is a Kessler-owned artifact discovered deep within ancient analog data vaults. It is a Voron-dense crystal composed of phosphorus and uraninite, with a density of approximately 1.5 million Vorons. Its defining feature is sentience. Although most people cannot hear it, the Catalyst can communicate telepathically at close range. It usually seeks a place to reside as it “bounces around” inside Elliot’s mind, often to his mental detriment.

As for the elements of the story itself, it holds a certain balance between solemnity, wholesome teamwork, broken factions, corruption, and loss. It touches on a lot of tragic topics, and in my opinion, it just shows a very solid moral foundation.

Just a reminder that this IS still a work-in-progress, I havent focused too much on my grammar since I rushed this brief proof of concept, but I think I sums it up very well. Let me know what I can do, since the idea isnt done yet!

 

 

 


r/FictionWriting • • 6h ago

Discussion Metaphor as red flag

0 Upvotes

I like metaphorical word but AI put it as a red flag. For me, a metaphor is a one word explained all. Because of AI it forced me to removed about this term and surprisingly removing metaphor words gave me another way to write the content with the same term with more words, which btw a requirement for recognizing word count in novel site


r/FictionWriting • • 14h ago

Beta Reading [In progress] [70K] [Romance/Adventure] Space Between

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1 Upvotes

I am looking for a beta reader for my Percy Jackson fanfiction, would anyone be interested?


r/FictionWriting • • 19h ago

Discussion Looking for writing partner

2 Upvotes

Hi,

I am looking for a writing partner (if you also know Spanish, this is a plus). This would be writing for fun and will not be published. I would like someone who is able to write paragraphs. The plot I have takes from 1985-1989 and then again, in 2015. It is fiction, like slice of life with other genres in-between. The plot takes place in the Lehigh Valley. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, specifically. I tend to do this on messenger and if you are comfortable and willing, we can go ahead and use messenger as the the writing platform. It would be back and forth.

Thanks!


r/FictionWriting • • 16h ago

Dark Zero Gang

1 Upvotes

Chapter One: Familiar Shadows

The midday sun shone brightly over the courtyards of the historic Italian university, while crowds of students poured toward the gates in boisterous, lively waves, celebrating the end of their final exams for the academic year. In contrast, “Yen” walked with slow, labored steps, leaning his full weight on a worn wooden cane, while his face bore a deep calm that concealed a world of mystery.

Amid the crowd in the hallway, the cane suddenly slipped from his hand with calculated lightness, striking a student passing by. The student spun around in extreme annoyance, his face darkening with a scowl, and grabbed “Yen’s” shirt collar in a sharp, fierce tone. His friends tried to pull him back in fear, pleading with him:

\- “Leave him alone! You’ll get us into trouble!”

But the student pushed them aside in a fit of rage, shot “Yen” a contemptuous glance, and shouted:

\- “Are you afraid of this cripple? He can barely stand without his damn crutch!”

Before he could finish his sentence, a broad shadow swooped down like a roaring wind. “Cristo” appeared, with his powerful physique and sharp features, seizing the attacker and his two friends in an iron grip that knew no mercy. Within seconds, the sounds of impact and cries for help rang out, before the three of them fell to the ground, groaning in agony.

Cristo brushed off his hands with utter nonchalance, then bent down gently to pick up the fallen crutch and handed it to his friend with a warm, friendly smile:

“Are you okay, my friend? Be careful next time.”

The relationship between “Yen” and “Cristo” was one of a kind; they were companions on a harsh journey. “Cristo,” a fierce boxer hardened by life’s harshness—he had lost his parents years ago in a tragic car accident, after which he and his younger brother moved to live with their wealthy uncle in this city—possessed tremendous physical strength and a kind heart.

As for Yen, he had come from a village in the countryside and lived in a very modest apartment near


r/FictionWriting • • 17h ago

Fantasy The freedom of being unmasked

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1 Upvotes

Beyond my imagination, there is a world where I am the owner and creator of my own joy, where I don’t chase material things, where I don’t have to explain myself, where I don’t wear masks. They accept me as I am. My ugly appearance and wicked personality surprise no one. I live by my own rules. They love my flaws, muse over my suffering, never counterfeit their love, and love me even for being selfish.

A world where I have no fear of what others think of me.


r/FictionWriting • • 17h ago

Advice Is this too much expo’ it’s about a writer

0 Upvotes

NOTE: Does anyone know any writers like this ?

——-

Donnie’s apartment had a scent of late-night loneliness, depression, and high-anxiety suffocating whoever went inside, a lingering contagion seeping into the thoughts of anyone after they exited his unit.

He sat at the mirror next to his computer monitor. His fingers trembled as he used green eyeliner on the rim of his shaved eyelids. His naked brows were filled in as small digits from zero to four and five to ten.

In between him and the mirror, a bottle of lithium lay toppled on its side, opened with a few pills scattered on the glass desk, leading to the lid a couple of inches from the spilled container.

He prepared himself and shifted to the screen, the tips of his fingers hovered over the keyboard, attempting to conjure some sort of special energy by placing them in a frozen position a millimeter from the buttons, waiting for the words to manifest, but they refused to materialize.


r/FictionWriting • • 18h ago

Advice Highlands : An aspiring historic novel in making

1 Upvotes

On the green highlands of the Livingston estate, Caroline stood in her little white gown, her cheeks reddened by the cold winds that tossed her skirts like a bird caught in flight. She heard her name called and, glancing down, saw the mud clinging to her shoes and frock. Nancy, ever brisk, led her toward the courtyard where two middle-aged men conversed, and a young, handsome lad stood nearby, nodding politely as he took in the beauty of the serene estate.

Caroline curtsied, stealing a side-glance at the young man, who met her with a quiet, curious glare.

“Oh, Lord Tuttles, please pardon the girl’s carelessness with her skirts! Nancy, dress her properly, at once!” cried Mr. Ribbon.

Blushing, Caroline turned away and walked down the long hallway toward her chambers, her heart fluttering as the father and son remained behind.

“Your daughter is of age, Ribbon,” said Lord Tuttles, his eyes following her retreat. “I can see it in her youthful grace.”

“I pledge her to your care, my lord,” replied Mr. Ribbon solemnly. “Henry is the rightful groom for her, as we have long intended.” He offered one of his finest blends of tea to his guest with a bow.

But the seventeen-year-old Henry found himself wondering if he could endure the wait — for the girl he had seen only moments ago had left an impression he could scarcely name.

Moments later she returned — now dressed in a deep red gown that caught the light and shaped her slender torso with elegant precision. Her cheeks, naturally flushed, glowed brighter as her eyes met Henry’s.

“Why don’t the children speak,” Lord Tuttles said with a smile, “lest they steal glances while we sip the finest tea of our lives. Go on, both of you.”

“Isn’t the place far too romantic for two young souls in their bloom, Ms. Ribbon?” Lord Henry remarked, his gaze fixed upon her, unmoving.

Caroline, her eyes lowered to the fine embroidery on her gown, gave a shy smile — a silent answer to his unspoken thought. Her heart fluttered beneath her corset as her hands gathered the restless folds of her skirt from the teasing wind.

“I have been here many times since I was a little girl,” she began softly. “My Ma would bring us here when we were young. She’d braid our hair and play at catch, while Jane — my sister — tried to climb that tree over there.”

She paused, as if catching a memory too delicate to speak aloud, then turned her head slightly toward the young Tuttle.

“Go on,” Henry urged with a gentle curiosity. “Tell me more. May I know Jane? We haven’t met her yet, I presume?”

“Let bygones be bygones,” she exclaimed softly, her fingers fidgeting with the silk in her hands as her gaze lifted toward the endless sky. Birds soared freely above, the clouds parting as though to make them way.

“Isn’t it an irony,” she mused, “that we believe the birds wander without direction, when in truth they know precisely where to go? The winds guide them, though neither knows the other’s name or origin. Nature, in its innocence, knows how to guide souls—yet we, in our selfishness, raise barriers that confine our own hearts, forbidding ourselves and those we love from truly experiencing the world.”

The silence that followed did not burden them; instead, it deepened—a quiet current through which their souls began to reach for one another.

Taken aback by the sudden moment of solidarity and unspoken acceptance, Henry looked at her with a subtle mix of sympathy and awe.

The fifteen-year-old girl before him seemed burdened with more than muddy skirts and newfound duties as a young lady. There was a weight in her eyes—one too heavy for her tender years—as she stared toward the lone tree, its roots deep in the watery soil beneath a sky darkened with angry clouds.

“It’s already late, sir. We must head back,” she said quietly.

During supper, Caroline stared at her soup with a bland expression. The aroma, the subtle seasoning, the delicate spices—all reminded her of Jane.

Speaking of that “lost” girl: meticulous, calculative, with a mind as precise as a finely tuned instrument. Her acumen in the realm was unwavering, her passion for numbers infinite and recurring, as she had once told Caroline near the lakeside, scratching away in her withered old notebook. Little Caroline could only watch, admiring her sister’s wild spirit, wondering if she would ever understand the strange, brilliant words Jane so effortlessly spoke.

A sudden thud on the table, a heavy fist rattling the plates, yanked her back to the present. Startled, she looked up to see her father’s face flushed red, eyes fixed sharply upon her.

“Playing with food isn’t appreciated, young lady. Finish that soup and start setting your things right. You’ll soon be a Tuttle’s bride,” her father said firmly, his tone leaving little space for reply.

Nancy hovered beside him, arranging the crockery on the table—the silver-plated plates bore edges chipped and dulled with age, their cracks catching the dim candlelight.

this is my attempt i have more i can share if this one has potential to be something. Pls attempt to give contructive criticism!