He watched the twinkling roll of incandescent bulbs from a slouched position in the passenger seat as the car glided down the hill into the city. The car was quiet apart from the tires grinding propulsion across the asphalt leaking into the interior. Accordingly the air felt thick as it often does during those long accounts of stroppy silence. Inside he wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t. Over the years he had surrounded himself with pillars of pride, some big, some small and to all varying degrees. He hadn’t needed help for many years, but now he did and there were few to turn to. He watched her for a bit. She had a blank face and glassy eyes. He knew he had hurt her. Eventually his prided would diminish and he would apologize, But he wondered as many men do how many times he could apologize?
To whom do gods owe their creation? Their eternal fingers pulling and plucking marionettes across that dimension we know as time. What first steps are then taken to become that man-made god? Do his strings still bind him to that cross which motivates his arms and tumbles his feet toward that unknown place?
“For the longest time you looked for him, because you knew the world wasn’t grey but black and white,” A man standing in front of a large crowd held up a Bible in his right hand. He wasn’t standing in front of old oak pews, not like those before him. He had a new dogma. “You looked for god here in the paper, trying to find him lying in the binding and so did I,” he threw the book down and looked out across the small group pointing out individuals. “Did you find him there?” He pointed to the next, “and you?” His eyes scanned through the crowd landing on one weak and weary follower. He bent down, His knees meeting his abdomen. He began to speak very softly in his sympathetic honey glazed voice. “Did you find him in the Koran?” The whole factory fell silent. The priest bit his lip and gave a sympathetic shake of his head. He stood back up. The whole factory quiet, not a word, not a whimper. “Have any of you found him in the Vatican or Mecca? Maybe you found him sitting beneath a tree?” Again silence was steady through the remanences of forgotten presses and dyes.
There in the group was a young boy and girl. They stood unimpressed by the grandiose gestures. They didn’t attend to find god or to listen to the ravings of an old man clinging to his youth through the promise of eternal life. Over the last year men and women were finding more hope in this gospel that lurked in the shadows. It needed no official building and grew in secrecy. Adam our full hearty infiltrator had questions. He felt driven to meet the man who claimed himself god. Maybe there was a connection between them or maybe he fit the bill for membership.
The priest continued to gloat, raising his arms and shouting “praise the man-god!” He kicked his feet together and hopped forward. “Brothers and sisters a servant of god is with us tonight! He has come to heal you!” Behind him a door opened and a wooden cart, followed by a cloaked man, came rumbling through. On top of it was a veil. Adam instantly made a connection to the Lord’s Supper. “They plunder the traditions of others and count them as their own,” He thought. “Maybe that’s why it’s growing so fast.” Elizabeth his companion was whispering in his ear “seems familiar you know?” He slanted his eyes and nodded his head.
The priest and the servant carefully folded up the veil. Underneath a counterfeit body of Christ, a series of concoctions, intend to heal the sick or give the appearance of healing. In the past merchants sold tonics claiming to do the impossible: make a sick man strong or an old wrinkled fungus filled prune of a woman attractive again. It never worked. The truth: Tonics were filled with high proof alcohol. As your blood alcohol content soared high, so did you self-esteem, riding the fumes of hard liquor. “Bring forth the lame and the blind and let them be healed!” Adam isn’t a man of faith. He had heard about faith healing, seen preachers on TV heal the sick and then asks the audience for donations. “As if god worked on the black market: Eyeballs $1,500, Small intestine, $2,500 and for a big miracle like a new heart $119,000. For some reason kidneys were more expensive than hearts. That never made sense.” They wheeled up an old cripple and asked him how it had happen, but Adam wasn’t listening he already knew the man was faking. What did it matter, which fabrication he had chosen. Elizabeth wasn’t a believer either. She was never raised in a church and she never thought about where she might end up after she died.
“What is your name and do you believe in the trans-formative man-god,” the priest asked. “Do you believe there is a god in all of us waiting to emerge?” The crowd was quiet again eyes glazed over, searching for a sign of the eternal flame. “It’s James and yes, yes I do!” The priest smiled and turned to the crowed. “The great lie: That you should be obedient to some stone tablet or to anyone. There is no fornication, no false witness, we are gods of our own journey we each decide what is right and what is wrong,” The priest opened his arms and continued. “All he asks of us is to love him and in turn he will awaken the god within us.”
The cloaked man gathered up the tallest tonic and placed it in the hands of the lame. “drink.” The priest motioned and he did. He guzzled it down. It spilled across his face and ran down his neck.Breathless from gluttony James handed the glass to the servant who returned it to its place. “I can walk, I can walk praise him!” James was rocking back and forth in excitement. “Help me, help me up!" The servant raised James to his feet and the crowd exploded with cheers and applause. “Behold god within him!” But he stood only for a moment until his weight buckled his knees and he collapsed. The crowd gasped and from among them came “unbeliever!” and “Infiltrator!”
Elizabeth could see Adam stiffening up, he was terrified. His eyes were large buttons stitched unblinking to his face. One man grabbed James and pulled him from the concrete riser and the crowd devoured him, pulling him to the center. Adam and Elizabeth watched in horror from boundaries they stood only feet away. Their legs now made lame from the ensuing terror. Their fists were made as cudgels and they beat him without mercy. An old man rode atop his back pressing him hard into the floor. He clinched James by the hair on his head and used it for leverage to slam his skull into the cement. Thud, thud, thud, he tenderized his flesh into pulp and pus. Bits of broken teeth were scattered across the scene and blood pooled from the area.
The Sunday preacher watched in disbelief as his flock cannibalized their own. The servant was not phased he pulled a pistol from beneath his layers and fired it into the air. All attention was now on him. He leapt down from the make-shift stage and meandered through the crowd. “How will our god make his grace known if he only sends his miracles to believers?” He removed his hood. He was bald and clean shaven. “He meant for this to happen, so that all could see his glory!” Elizabeth nudged Adam. She couldn’t say anything the servant was getting too close. She pressed her face against him and grabbed him as one does in grief. He wrapped his arms around her neck. Between it and her hood her identity was well hidden. He adorned his own face upon her head in an attempt to conceal his identity as well. The crowed had circled the body as wolves circle a lamb. The servant kneeled down kissing the head of the deceased. “Lay your hands on him brothers,” he commanded. The crowd moved as one organism and kneeled down. Some fought for the hands, vying for forgiveness. Adam grabbed a leg, he was checking for a pulse. There was none. He was dead. “We believe in you man-god hear our prayers and return the soul to these bones.” Nothing happened. “This is absurd,” Adam thought. “Return to us your servant!” Nothing happened. Adam was starting to get irritated a heavy-set stinky man was trying to usurp his claim on the Tibial artery. He slapped his hand away, but he continued to intrude. A few others eyeballed him. He was making a scene. Finally, he lost his temper and grabbed a fat finger and pulled it backwards over-extending it. His friend looked like he might scream and with that he stopped. “Let your glory be know oh god!” Adam had finally secured his right to the leg. Thump! Adam felt a pulse! It horrified him he fell back on his ass. The corpse was starting to twitch.
Chapter 2
This story takes place at a time of great technological advancement and cultural upheaval. Anything found old or rusted was being thrown away in favor of the plastic, shiny and plated. The sons and daughters of earth were lighting a great beryllium bust of Narcissus. They failed to realize that it is of greater consequence to believe yourself overburdened by correctness and be found false in your assumptions than it is to be sure in only a few things and be vindicated. Of the billions existing on the planet none were quite as bright as Dr. Sebastian Finch. The world’s foremost expert on gene therapy and recombination thereof. This being said it must be followed by stating, that he of course worked in a very upscale laboratory for the Bakata Corporation. Currently his work included the study and alteration of Chimpanzees and the endangered Bonobos of Central Africa. The work was contracted from the United States government by the corporation. In all truth the research was meant to pacify those the establishment deemed unlikely to become re- institutionalized. Bonobos while related to chimpanzees are slightly smaller with an average height of 4.2 feet and a weight ranging from 75 to 100 lbs. Chimpanzees vary in height from 4 to 4.5 feet and can weigh upwards of 130 lbs. But the reason behind the study lay in social interaction. Chimpanzees are well noted for their aggression with numerous documentations of males terminating the offspring of other males or chimps from foreign troops. Bonobos do not express these aggressive traits.
The furnishings of the Bakata Corporation were lavish. The company’s net worth topped forty billion dollars. They owned laboratories all over the states and across the pacific. But this one was special. It lay hidden in the hills of Kentucky because of the nature of their work and the threat of corporate espionage. They had taken all measures of secrecy. Like most compounds there were gates, fences, guards and even automated window panels that in a moment’s notice could block out all the natural light entering the facility. It was large and impressive amassing more than four square miles.
The central caging area for the chimps was a gigantic artificial biome. The interior housed a diverse number of fauna and species as to replicate the natural ecological systems of the various species deemed fit for study. Elizabeth watched from the ground level observatory as the retractable roof sitting some 350 feet above her began to open. Even though this was a daily event she had never grown tired of the brilliance it presented. The light shining through the enormous glass dome uncovered a great wealth of nature, it was lush and thriving. The sun gleamed, reflected and bounced rays all across the forest and because of the many meandering glass tunnels used for observation and capture , the light was refracted and cast a stream of rainbows that revealed the many treasures housed inside. Part of the glass used throughout the biome was a one way mirror. This had two primary applications, the first being that it allowed the researchers to observe the behavior of the animals without them ever knowing. Secondly, the thin film of aluminum stretched over the glass was a security against spying satellites.
Alright! I hope what I'm about to say doesn't discourage you from future attempts at writing, but I think your story needs considerably amount of work to become better.
The two main issues that I had with it were:
- Excessive amount of attention to irrelevant details that clogged the story with futile adjectives and statements. The net product of this is that you end up making it harder to read. To quote examples:
The priest and the servant carefully folded up the veil. Underneath a counterfeit body of Christ, a series of concoctions, intend to heal the sick or give the appearance of healing. In the past merchants sold tonics claiming to do the impossible: make a sick man strong or an old wrinkled fungus filled prune of a woman attractive again. It never worked. The truth: Tonics were filled with high proof alcohol.
Was it relevant for the development of your particular story to tell us the contents of previous concoctions were alcohol? It feels like you gathered some facts around when you were writing and felt like sharing them to give your story more credibility, but they feel forced when presented this way. It feels clumsy and artificial, where it would be much more relevant to share facts that actually matter in some level to the story.
Another example:
The cloaked man gathered up the tallest tonic and placed it in the hands of the lame. “drink.” The priest motioned and he did. He guzzled it down. It spilled across his face and ran down his neck.Breathless from gluttony James handed the glass to the servant who returned it to its place.
Do you perceive the overwhelming use of adjectives and descriptors here? Why is it relevant for us to now that it was the tallest tonic? Or that the priest made a motion? You could cut short a lot of your sentences and make them probably just as impactful. Too much description makes stories difficult to appreciate.
- Confusing scenery and telling of events. We start with a man inside a car unable to apologize for something in the first paragraph. The second paragraph are just random questions and the third is where I assume the story actually begins. None of that is clear to the reader. You basically have to guess what is happening based on context, and your attentiveness to detail actually hampers my ability to appreciate the big picture. It took me a while to grasp the whole imagery you were painting, and at multiples times you could have improved that by making a cleaner description more focused on the big aspects of the scene insteand of mixing it so much with things that quite frankly do not matter. At points is seems like Adam is the narrator, or the narrator is telling things more from Adam's perspective, but that doesn't become clear until later on. Anyway, it is confusing.
The second chapter clearly seems to be another part of your storyline, but I think you should rework a little bit the first chapter being more explicit about what is happening and what character is thinking what. In my opinion you should get rid of excessive description, since that only makes everything harder to read, and you should worry just about presenting facts that are relevant to the story. I don't mind Adam grabbing the tibial artery to measure the pulse, that was fine. I do mind having to randomly read about what people used to put in old concoctions.
Sorry if my 'review' seems a little bit harsh, I can see that you did put effort into this. I hope you can use my critiques for your benefit.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
harshness doesn't bother me i welcome it. This reply would be longer but right now im going through some very personal problems.
as far a the tonics go i didnt look up the history i just remember that from school but i will do as you say and cut, cut, cut.
probably reading to much fight club. palanuck goes into strange detail maybe i was mimicking. but again ill right more to ou latter and cut some of the stuff i agree with all that you said parts feel disconnected.
some of the things that are going on im intentionally trying to confuse you. like the change in scenes. these events are all taking place out of order and as the story goes on i want you wonder how they all connect . two stories in one overall story. they are actually the same story you just cant tell until the twist is revealed. (adam is a clone of the man-god.) (adam doesnt know this)
the people in the car are the parents of Elizabeth. that scene takes place about 18 years before
I would suggest, if that is to be the case, for you at least to put headers of locations and places, like "18 years ago, Michigan", or something like that. They still will be disconnected from each other piece, but the reader will know that he is reading different parts of the story without getting confusing.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
Yeah I can do that. Thanks for the help I'll put your tips to good use. Do you ejoy the premise at all or do you feel just lost
I think to appreciate more your story I would like to see a new version, a little bit more streamlined. And I would also need to see more of the story itself, since it was not clear what the story was about up until the point that you wrote.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
Chapter 1
THE MAN-GOD
He watched the twinkling roll of incandescent bulbs from a slouched position in the passenger seat as the car glided down the hill into the city. The car was quiet apart from the tires grinding propulsion across the asphalt leaking into the interior. Accordingly the air felt thick as it often does during those long accounts of stroppy silence. Inside he wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t. Over the years he had surrounded himself with pillars of pride, some big, some small and to all varying degrees. He hadn’t needed help for many years, but now he did and there were few to turn to. He watched her for a bit. She had a blank face and glassy eyes. He knew he had hurt her. Eventually his prided would diminish and he would apologize, But he wondered as many men do how many times he could apologize?
To whom do gods owe their creation? Their eternal fingers pulling and plucking marionettes across that dimension we know as time. What first steps are then taken to become that man-made god? Do his strings still bind him to that cross which motivates his arms and tumbles his feet toward that unknown place?
“For the longest time you looked for him, because you knew the world wasn’t grey but black and white,” A man standing in front of a large crowd held up a Bible in his right hand. He wasn’t standing in front of old oak pews, not like those before him. He had a new dogma. “You looked for god here in the paper, trying to find him lying in the binding and so did I,” he threw the book down and looked out across the small group pointing out individuals. “Did you find him there?” He pointed to the next, “and you?” His eyes scanned through the crowd landing on one weak and weary follower. He bent down, His knees meeting his abdomen. He began to speak very softly in his sympathetic honey glazed voice. “Did you find him in the Koran?” The whole factory fell silent. The priest bit his lip and gave a sympathetic shake of his head. He stood back up. The whole factory quiet, not a word, not a whimper. “Have any of you found him in the Vatican or Mecca? Maybe you found him sitting beneath a tree?” Again silence was steady through the remanences of forgotten presses and dyes.
There in the group was a young boy and girl. They stood unimpressed by the grandiose gestures. They didn’t attend to find god or to listen to the ravings of an old man clinging to his youth through the promise of eternal life. Over the last year men and women were finding more hope in this gospel that lurked in the shadows. It needed no official building and grew in secrecy. Adam our full hearty infiltrator had questions. He felt driven to meet the man who claimed himself god. Maybe there was a connection between them or maybe he fit the bill for membership.
The priest continued to gloat, raising his arms and shouting “praise the man-god!” He kicked his feet together and hopped forward. “Brothers and sisters a servant of god is with us tonight! He has come to heal you!” Behind him a door opened and a wooden cart, followed by a cloaked man, came rumbling through. On top of it was a veil. Adam instantly made a connection to the Lord’s Supper. “They plunder the traditions of others and count them as their own,” He thought. “Maybe that’s why it’s growing so fast.” Elizabeth his companion was whispering in his ear “seems familiar you know?” He slanted his eyes and nodded his head.
The priest and the servant carefully folded up the veil. Underneath a counterfeit body of Christ, a series of concoctions, intend to heal the sick or give the appearance of healing. In the past merchants sold tonics claiming to do the impossible: make a sick man strong or an old wrinkled fungus filled prune of a woman attractive again. It never worked. The truth: Tonics were filled with high proof alcohol. As your blood alcohol content soared high, so did you self-esteem, riding the fumes of hard liquor. “Bring forth the lame and the blind and let them be healed!” Adam isn’t a man of faith. He had heard about faith healing, seen preachers on TV heal the sick and then asks the audience for donations. “As if god worked on the black market: Eyeballs $1,500, Small intestine, $2,500 and for a big miracle like a new heart $119,000. For some reason kidneys were more expensive than hearts. That never made sense.” They wheeled up an old cripple and asked him how it had happen, but Adam wasn’t listening he already knew the man was faking. What did it matter, which fabrication he had chosen. Elizabeth wasn’t a believer either. She was never raised in a church and she never thought about where she might end up after she died.
“What is your name and do you believe in the trans-formative man-god,” the priest asked. “Do you believe there is a god in all of us waiting to emerge?” The crowd was quiet again eyes glazed over, searching for a sign of the eternal flame. “It’s James and yes, yes I do!” The priest smiled and turned to the crowed. “The great lie: That you should be obedient to some stone tablet or to anyone. There is no fornication, no false witness, we are gods of our own journey we each decide what is right and what is wrong,” The priest opened his arms and continued. “All he asks of us is to love him and in turn he will awaken the god within us.”
The cloaked man gathered up the tallest tonic and placed it in the hands of the lame. “drink.” The priest motioned and he did. He guzzled it down. It spilled across his face and ran down his neck.Breathless from gluttony James handed the glass to the servant who returned it to its place. “I can walk, I can walk praise him!” James was rocking back and forth in excitement. “Help me, help me up!" The servant raised James to his feet and the crowd exploded with cheers and applause. “Behold god within him!” But he stood only for a moment until his weight buckled his knees and he collapsed. The crowd gasped and from among them came “unbeliever!” and “Infiltrator!”
Elizabeth could see Adam stiffening up, he was terrified. His eyes were large buttons stitched unblinking to his face. One man grabbed James and pulled him from the concrete riser and the crowd devoured him, pulling him to the center. Adam and Elizabeth watched in horror from boundaries they stood only feet away. Their legs now made lame from the ensuing terror. Their fists were made as cudgels and they beat him without mercy. An old man rode atop his back pressing him hard into the floor. He clinched James by the hair on his head and used it for leverage to slam his skull into the cement. Thud, thud, thud, he tenderized his flesh into pulp and pus. Bits of broken teeth were scattered across the scene and blood pooled from the area.
The Sunday preacher watched in disbelief as his flock cannibalized their own. The servant was not phased he pulled a pistol from beneath his layers and fired it into the air. All attention was now on him. He leapt down from the make-shift stage and meandered through the crowd. “How will our god make his grace known if he only sends his miracles to believers?” He removed his hood. He was bald and clean shaven. “He meant for this to happen, so that all could see his glory!” Elizabeth nudged Adam. She couldn’t say anything the servant was getting too close. She pressed her face against him and grabbed him as one does in grief. He wrapped his arms around her neck. Between it and her hood her identity was well hidden. He adorned his own face upon her head in an attempt to conceal his identity as well. The crowed had circled the body as wolves circle a lamb. The servant kneeled down kissing the head of the deceased. “Lay your hands on him brothers,” he commanded. The crowd moved as one organism and kneeled down. Some fought for the hands, vying for forgiveness. Adam grabbed a leg, he was checking for a pulse. There was none. He was dead. “We believe in you man-god hear our prayers and return the soul to these bones.” Nothing happened. “This is absurd,” Adam thought. “Return to us your servant!” Nothing happened. Adam was starting to get irritated a heavy-set stinky man was trying to usurp his claim on the Tibial artery. He slapped his hand away, but he continued to intrude. A few others eyeballed him. He was making a scene. Finally, he lost his temper and grabbed a fat finger and pulled it backwards over-extending it. His friend looked like he might scream and with that he stopped. “Let your glory be know oh god!” Adam had finally secured his right to the leg. Thump! Adam felt a pulse! It horrified him he fell back on his ass. The corpse was starting to twitch.
Chapter 2
This story takes place at a time of great technological advancement and cultural upheaval. Anything found old or rusted was being thrown away in favor of the plastic, shiny and plated. The sons and daughters of earth were lighting a great beryllium bust of Narcissus. They failed to realize that it is of greater consequence to believe yourself overburdened by correctness and be found false in your assumptions than it is to be sure in only a few things and be vindicated. Of the billions existing on the planet none were quite as bright as Dr. Sebastian Finch. The world’s foremost expert on gene therapy and recombination thereof. This being said it must be followed by stating, that he of course worked in a very upscale laboratory for the Bakata Corporation. Currently his work included the study and alteration of Chimpanzees and the endangered Bonobos of Central Africa. The work was contracted from the United States government by the corporation. In all truth the research was meant to pacify those the establishment deemed unlikely to become re- institutionalized. Bonobos while related to chimpanzees are slightly smaller with an average height of 4.2 feet and a weight ranging from 75 to 100 lbs. Chimpanzees vary in height from 4 to 4.5 feet and can weigh upwards of 130 lbs. But the reason behind the study lay in social interaction. Chimpanzees are well noted for their aggression with numerous documentations of males terminating the offspring of other males or chimps from foreign troops. Bonobos do not express these aggressive traits.
The furnishings of the Bakata Corporation were lavish. The company’s net worth topped forty billion dollars. They owned laboratories all over the states and across the pacific. But this one was special. It lay hidden in the hills of Kentucky because of the nature of their work and the threat of corporate espionage. They had taken all measures of secrecy. Like most compounds there were gates, fences, guards and even automated window panels that in a moment’s notice could block out all the natural light entering the facility. It was large and impressive amassing more than four square miles.
The central caging area for the chimps was a gigantic artificial biome. The interior housed a diverse number of fauna and species as to replicate the natural ecological systems of the various species deemed fit for study. Elizabeth watched from the ground level observatory as the retractable roof sitting some 350 feet above her began to open. Even though this was a daily event she had never grown tired of the brilliance it presented. The light shining through the enormous glass dome uncovered a great wealth of nature, it was lush and thriving. The sun gleamed, reflected and bounced rays all across the forest and because of the many meandering glass tunnels used for observation and capture , the light was refracted and cast a stream of rainbows that revealed the many treasures housed inside. Part of the glass used throughout the biome was a one way mirror. This had two primary applications, the first being that it allowed the researchers to observe the behavior of the animals without them ever knowing. Secondly, the thin film of aluminum stretched over the glass was a security against spying satellites.
The two main issues that I had with it were:
- Excessive amount of attention to irrelevant details that clogged the story with futile adjectives and statements. The net product of this is that you end up making it harder to read. To quote examples: Was it relevant for the development of your particular story to tell us the contents of previous concoctions were alcohol? It feels like you gathered some facts around when you were writing and felt like sharing them to give your story more credibility, but they feel forced when presented this way. It feels clumsy and artificial, where it would be much more relevant to share facts that actually matter in some level to the story.
Another example: Do you perceive the overwhelming use of adjectives and descriptors here? Why is it relevant for us to now that it was the tallest tonic? Or that the priest made a motion? You could cut short a lot of your sentences and make them probably just as impactful. Too much description makes stories difficult to appreciate.
- Confusing scenery and telling of events. We start with a man inside a car unable to apologize for something in the first paragraph. The second paragraph are just random questions and the third is where I assume the story actually begins. None of that is clear to the reader. You basically have to guess what is happening based on context, and your attentiveness to detail actually hampers my ability to appreciate the big picture. It took me a while to grasp the whole imagery you were painting, and at multiples times you could have improved that by making a cleaner description more focused on the big aspects of the scene insteand of mixing it so much with things that quite frankly do not matter. At points is seems like Adam is the narrator, or the narrator is telling things more from Adam's perspective, but that doesn't become clear until later on. Anyway, it is confusing.
The second chapter clearly seems to be another part of your storyline, but I think you should rework a little bit the first chapter being more explicit about what is happening and what character is thinking what. In my opinion you should get rid of excessive description, since that only makes everything harder to read, and you should worry just about presenting facts that are relevant to the story. I don't mind Adam grabbing the tibial artery to measure the pulse, that was fine. I do mind having to randomly read about what people used to put in old concoctions.
Sorry if my 'review' seems a little bit harsh, I can see that you did put effort into this. I hope you can use my critiques for your benefit.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
as far a the tonics go i didnt look up the history i just remember that from school but i will do as you say and cut, cut, cut.
probably reading to much fight club. palanuck goes into strange detail maybe i was mimicking. but again ill right more to ou latter and cut some of the stuff i agree with all that you said parts feel disconnected.
the people in the car are the parents of Elizabeth. that scene takes place about 18 years before
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).