deleted at author's request, Short story Options

[Guest_Andrew_*]

deleted at author's request

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi Andrew.

From me, too a formal big welcome to MM (we’ve exchanged PMs).

Great to see you posting here. I hope you enjoy the site and benefit from it.

You live just down the A34 road from me, by the way. (About fifty miles).

I won’t be too heavy on this crit (don’t want to scare you off) but if you want stronger crits please let us know.

Cheers, James.

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>Title: Pushing the Right Buttons
>Word Count: 1300 words
>My first, hesitant post...

(Thanks for giving word count - helps).


"And if I press this button?"

"Oh no, you don't press that button. You just leave that button alone." Dr Gough smiled unconvincingly and continued to drum her forefingers on her lap. After a pregnant pause, she added, "If that's everything, shall we get you in, then?"

(Avoid cliches - “pregnant pause” is a very well-known one).

"This is Mr Linklaus.

(Where did you find his name? Unusual - good)

Interesting, I thought: a feeling. Perhaps I was getting better already.

(Try putting thoughts into italics or single quotes. Actually, publishers like single quotes for speech. NB: I think that in the USA the converse is the case).

(“flickering computer screen” puts this in the recent past - do you want that? - Modern flat screens don’t flicker).

"We'll see you on the other side, Mr Peters," the doctor promised, as they pushed me into the darkness.

(ROFL! Makes it sound like time / travel or a crematorium - good note of worry. Well done).

#

(I didn’t realise the magnets made noises - thanks).

(“Mostly, these sounds were sudden and short-lived, though at other times they came in prolonged periods of recurring and strangely tuneful motifs.” - excellent writing).

(“Held tightly as I was in the close grip of the machine..” - less good writing - awkward inverse).

(“these unfamiliar, foreign stimuli evolved quickly into a natural part of my experience, as if they occurred, quite organically, through some internal process of my own.” - back to excellent writing).

If I looked above the tips of my prism glasses, I could see the ceiling only a few centimetres from my head. As I lay supine, my elbows pressed themselves against the walls. "You may experience a degree of claustrophobia," they had warned me during the induction. What though, I wondered silently, could be more claustrophobic than one's own mind?

(Prism glasses?)

(Excellent point in last sentence - but needs developing).

(Great stuff!)

#

(If anyone tells me to do choosing quickly without thought my mind simply goes into a loop and I cannot function - I would have pressed nothing).

You enjoy the challenges posed by unfamiliar situations.

(Yes - the black button sounds part of the challenge. I would have pressed it first!)

(See I’m reading and reacting to your writing, rather than critting - means you are carrying me along with good writing).

Truth be told, I was sceptical about the merits of my treatment. I knew that this emptiness was not really related to any person, or any event, in particular. Rather, this nebulous sadness, this sense of dislocation, seemed to me to be a normal aspect of my character. It was natural, immutable. Doubtless, they could fill me with drugs, with panic inhibitors and neural receptors, with poisons that would re-route the synapses and the flow of chemicals around the channels of my body. And probably, it would be better for my mother, mourning at this very moment in the hospital reception for some vision of a son that had never really existed. Whenever I now returned to my childhood home, I would catch her gazing pensively in my direction, wordlessly imploring me to reassure her that her child was not irredeemably impaired. Or at least, that she shared no part in the blame - she had convinced herself that the divorce was at fault. Or the boarding school that I had been sent to. Or the colour of the wallpaper in my bedroom.

(Excellent, Andrew).

Mostly, my mind was an abyss. I had trained myself this way and the prospect of change was frightening. If they filled me with the chemicals that they wanted to, it seemed to me that they may as well kill me. Because I would no longer be me, but someone else.

(I’ve just decided not to press the black button. Too late?)
#

(Excellent, understated and enthralling, Andrew. thanks for the read. To be honest there are very few suggestions I can make here...

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I took it that the child had murdered his drunken Father and, therefore was being assessed. Was that your intention or just my interpretation, please?

Well paced, good central character, excellent suspense, fooled me - I thought the button would be pressed. etc etc.

Sorry old chap, I simply can't give you a bigger crit as I offered to before I read this - how can I? Save to say, don’t change much and send it to a magazine for a competition / publishing. Too good not to.

PS Just read your other critics and I agree with Fran about making the personnel nameless - just distracts - but I have a feeling you used the names on purpose?

James.