Hi guys.
I mentioned a few days ago that I might leave a short story here and ask for a bit of feedback.
I apologise if this is cheeky of me turning up and asking this kind of favour but you seem like an accommodating bunch and I'll try to return the deed by hanging around, getting involved and spreading the word.
I'm not really asking for technical criticism as such(although I'm sure there would be plenty
) I'm more interested in your opinion as a reader. Particularly if you are a reader of the horror/suspense genre because that is the particular group the story is aimed at.
Any and all comments will be welcome but please bear in mind for the purposes of my course I'm more interested in what you feel as a member of the audience reading it.
Questions to think about
:
a) Did the beginning capture your attention?
b) Did the middle section hold your attention?
c) Was the ending satisfying?
d) Were the characters believable?
e) Was the story well-paced?
f) Did you think the story was suitable for it's intended audience and medium (horror/suspense magazine/anthology).
g) Did you predict the little twist at the end?
h) What would you have done differently if it was your story?
i) What was your favourite component (characters, setting, storyline etc)?
j) What was your least favourite component?
k) Did any part of the story make you think or reflect in any way. If so what triggered it and what did you think about?
l) If you could give the story a name, what would you call it?
No one is in any way obliged to answer all or any of these questions, but these are the kinds of things I will find helpful.
Thank you to everyone who may or may not respond.
*****************
Here's the story:
The door had not been there yesterday. This David knew. For he had lived alone in the house for the past seventeen years. And until this morning there had only ever been a wall in the space between the bookshelf and the bureau.
He stared at it, wondering, mesmerised for half a day. His curiosity as to what lay beyond the heavy oak door was in persistent contest with his fear of the unknown. Yet something called to him. And as day turned to dusk and the room, his study, grew darker, David perceived a glowing through the crack in the doorframe. The room behind the door was lit. His trance was broken and he stood to his feet in the gloom. He found himself too frightened to move but decided to stay still would be as terrifying. Against his better judgement his moved towards the strange new door. Towards the light of the room beyond it.
With sweaty palms he twisted the handle, and the door came away from the wall. The room inside was a bed-chamber. He recognised something about it, a peculiar sense of unease that he couldn't place. Yet something compelled him to move deeper into the room. It was a warm, romantically vibrant room on the surface. But the walls held a secret. They seen too much. David felt watched. Spied upon by some invisible entity.
A sole flame flickered in the candelabrum that stood to the side of the room. The wax of a thousand candles draped the tall implement in a silky gown that gave it the look of a bride
He stepped inside but was reluctant to close the door behind him, lest it vanish again and leave him stuck on the wrong side. Under the warm gaze of the bride he felt safer. He would remain here until daybreak. Then he noticed something protruding from behind the four-poster bed. Something old and dry and altogether unpleasant. It was a human foot. David took a deep, shaky breath of stale air and moved closer. He fully expected to find a corpse attatched the foot and as he rounded the bench he found himself looking up at the bride for moral support. From this new angle, though, she didn't seem as friendly as before and the lone candle flickered as if in anticipation of something David knew he was not going to like and suddenly he felt the fear returning. He was aware of a considerable change in the air. He had to remind himself to breathe.
He moved to return to the door, but it slammed shut and shattered into a cloud of splinters and dust which vanished into thin air leaving only a wall in its place. The air grew heavier still and the room seemed to spin and tilt and stretch and skew before him. And David fainted on the cold wooden floor.
In his unconciousness, David was haunted by a series of visions. He saw the congregation of a church, all dressed for some momentous occasion. He recognised some of the faces. Friends and aquaintances he'd made long ago. He saw relatives, too and the scene began to feel like deja vu. He turned away from the row's of faces and a beautiful bride stood beside him. She was looking at him. Waiting. Was he supposed to say something? He looked again at the faces he had once known. They were staring at him. Nodding, prodding as if hurrying him along. One of the older men, who was standing near the bride was becoming increasingly agitated and as he grew redder in the face David could bear the pressure no longer.
"I'm sorry." he said and began to run up the aisle, through the rows of people. Their staring faces followed him and engulfed him and before he reached the door at the back of the room he was back in the room again now. But he was viewing the room from a different perspective. He was viewing it as a bird might, from the corner, and his physical self was elsewhere. The door was there again and it opened. The bride from the church came in. Her eyes were red and her make-up was smudged and she closed the door behind her and lay on the bed, burying her head deep into the pillow. She began to sob, shuddering in an insane fit of hysteria. She lifted her head from the pillow and David saw into her eyes. The girl was ruined. She would never recover from such a humiliating rejection. Her groom had fled the scene in front of her family and his, leaving her alone in front of the unforgiving crowd. David could bear to watch no longer, yet he had no control over these visions.
There was a bang at the door and it swung open, smashing into the chest of drawers behind it. A middle-aged man, the man who had been standing next to the girl in the church, stood in the threshold.
"You've ruined me!" The man said with a dark growl as he began to move towards the bride.
The girl moved backwards, tripping on the trail of her gown and falling in a twisted pile on the floor. "Father, please. It wasn't my..."
"You've brought disgrace upon my name. You brought a coward into my home and wasted my money."
"I..."
His farrier's hands came down on her face like a hammer on hot steel. And again. He repeated the motion a dozen times and David flinched each time. Then the man turned to walk out.
"I'm sorry." She managed to say, through bloodied teeth, trying to stand up.
"Don't. Answer. Me. Back." Her father snatched the candelabrum from its place at the side of the room and swang it around catching the bride full in the face. David try to scream Stop it, Stop it, but no words came. He watched as the candle holder came down again and again and the candle itself came loose and fell, igniting the bride's silky gown, but the man continued his punishment of the poor girl and as David began to drift back into conciousness he thought he heard her cry "My Baby".
He came to, screaming, and opened his eyes. He was still in the room, as it had been when he had first entered. And he felt someone looking over him. Lifting his eyes up he saw the bride, her face scarred and burnt. He looked her in the eyes and said "Eliza...". David's sobs came heavily and he buried his head in the gown of the girl whom he had left at the alter seventeen years ago. "I'm sorry."
"I know." she said. "I forgive you." She stood and motioned towards the wall where the door had reappeared and David went through it back into his own study. He looked back only once, in time to see the room fade into nothingness and the door once again became the familiar bare wall beside the bookshelf.
The events of the night would haunt David for the rest of his life but he took comfort from the fact that Eliza had forgiven him. She had wanted to share with him the pain she had been made to suffer because of his cowardice. Eliza could rest now. And so could their child. And for that he was forever grateful.
