Where I plan to share my writing :]

Writing based off the song by Hozier, “in a week”

Daily #4

A week.
They'll find us in a week, I had said.
The brambles had only just begun to snake their way up to us, then. Small shoots gently coiled around my extremities. Softly pressing against the pale canvas that was my skin, perhaps threatening to draw something out with their sharp thorns. But not yet cruel enough to break through.
They'll find us in a week.
It had been longer than that.
Rotting, we had laid together undisturbed.The mangled fluids of our flesh and perhaps our souls had sunk into the soil long ago by now. The worms and bugs that ate the dirt carried pieces of us away with them. I wondered where we would end up. We were scattered across the landscape, like pieces of stardust from a fallen meteor. I hoped I could float across the vast dark sky, dust in a nebula. And I hoped I could be at the bottom of the ocean.
No longer able to see or speak to one another, still we felt each other's presence. Our laughter and soft touch gone, now connected through the complex of fungi that weaved itself through the layers of damp earth.
We had been each other’s only company for oh so many lifetimes but I would not grow tired, not ever.
Even as things festered within my ribcage, as beetles crawled through my skull — together, we were decaying beautifully.
They’ll find us in a week, I had said.
Time passed beyond counting, night and day disappearing as we sunk under the sky. I would say it again.
And I suppose they did. They found us. Week after week we fed the earth. The wild animals came to graze. Our bones rested far below in a deep, blissful, wide awake sort of sleep. Dreams filled with the strange and colourful lives that moved throughout our hollow bodies.
And as seasons came and went, and winters became blooming springs, we became the flowers.

337 words

Word war !!! #1 (day #5)

“How long have you been watching me?”
Horror swarmed in her chest.
“Always.” Came the reply. It was calm, too calm – her head burned with fury and disgust. She could barely speak. She wanted to scream out, to find that awful shadowy thing, to see it with her own wide eyes. To tell it just how her heart was twisting itself up inside her ribcage and how it better be careful or all the pain would burst out of her chest everywhere and begin to corrode it.
I'm not scared of you, she would yell, and grasp it between her two hands until it melted away into the floor and into nothing.
“Why -?” was the only thing she could force out of her raw throat.
“ Everyone is watched," she could almost smell that thing's voice and it smelt like rust, and disease. Things that lurked in the dirt. It was daggers in her eardrums. She wanted to let the rage out of her lungs but all she could do was smother it as she collapsed to the ground and hugged her knees close to her chest as if trying to shelter away from piercing eyes.
The voice rung out through her bones once again
“You are not special for that.”
Something lurched in her stomach about the sentence. For that. Not for that. For something else.
“No one is supposed to find out.”
She uncrumpled herself, suddenly struck with a new kind of fear. Her bones felt hollowed out as she

251 words - 5 mins

Word war #2 !! for funsies

“I told you we needed more glitter.”
The creature fell apart in my hands, disintegrating on the cold stone floor.
“Don't talk to me, more glitter wouldn't have helped, this just wasn't going to work, I knew it wasn't going to work, you should have listened to me, I can't-” the words spilled out of my control. I stopped myself.
“I'm so sorry,” I said, I was holding back sobs but they made themselves known as I tried to speak, “I'm so, so sorry.”
“It's okay,” Mag stared at the pile of broken scrap materials that lay before us.
“It was dead anyway. I just thought this might work.”
Dead. Dead dead dead. It was my fault the creature was dead and now it was my fault it wasn't alive again. I was awful. And I couldn't stop myself, again my mouth opened and I heard my own voice tumbling out, trying desperately to justify my awful self
“It's just, I thought- there's not much of the glitter left- it's important- we need to save it Mag, I thought this was enough, it wasn't my fault, I wasn't to know it wasn't enough, I thought, I thought-”
I shut my mouth again and squeezed my eyes tightly closed. I wanted to shrink into nothingness hearing myself. Be quiet. Shut up. This has happened because of you.
Now the glitter has been wasted anyway.
Mag sighed. She never seemed sad. Never. And she didn't now, either. But while I couldn't see it on her face or in the way she moved I could feel it within her as we stood next to each other. It

274 words - 6 mins

Word War with @Seagulling
284 words (excluding italics)

Early that afternoon (Aleks’ perspective)

“I told you we needed more glitter,” I groaned.
“Well it’s not my fault you didn’t account for the heart being this big!” Angel snaps back.
My sister has been helping me prep for tonight. I’m planning on purposing to my girlfriend.
Angel pulls her dyed hair up into a messy bun.
“Well, I don’t think we can get more glitter here in an hour. So just figure it out, Aleks,” she tells me as she walks off to start placing lanterns along the trail.
I’ve chosen a small clearing in the woods that my girlfriend Ashe and I hike all the time. Angel’s going to bring her here tonight.
I really hope it all goes well.

Later that evening (Ashe’s perspective)

Angel carefully leads me through these very familiar woods. Aleks and I hike here all the time. It’s our favorite place.
But tonight, there’s lanterns lining the trail, lights hung in the trees.
Angel also told me that I had to wear the romper she got me: a rose gold one that hugged my frame perfectly. I paired it with black heeled boots, and plenty of silver jewelry.
There he was. Aleks was waiting for me. Standing in a massive outline of a heart. The outline seemed to be glitter.
He held out his hand, pulling me into the heart.
I gently placed my hands on his chest as he held me.
“Hi,” I mumble.
Aleks begins a super sweet little ramble about his feelings (which makes me blush a lot).
“Well, I guess what I want to ask is,” he begins as he gets down on one knee, a beautiful diamond ring on display in a little box in his hands. “Ashe, will you marry me?”

Jellyfish Flowers

- random excerpt, this was a pre existing worldbuilding aspect of one of my stories but this specific writing piece started as a not-submitted-on-time daily #3 lol, and then I improved it / added a little since I had time

Deep in the wood, velvet shadows embraced her. The path was steeper than she would have liked. It brought to mind a slide of some darkened, long-forgotten child's playplace. Tall trees with jagged branches framed the small clearing of foliage like an invitation to enter the jaws of some unearthly beast. It seemed in some way darkly enticing, but still something about it gave her a sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was a stark and sudden drop into a dark oblivion. In her mind's eye she could see something monstrous crawling up from through the overgrowth, clawing away bracken and brambles, tearing a path for itself in its violent hunger to reach her.
The hair on the back of her neck stood upright, and she felt as though the bones in her spine were trying to break out from her skin.
She took a deep breath in, and closed her eyes. When she opened them the monster was no more.
Reality faced her, and reality was nothing but the forest and its black depths staring back at her.
She began to clamber downwards.
Rough bark and snapped twigs scraped her palms as she descended. She was grasping desperately and blindly at the plants around her in an attempt to steady herself. Nettles and thistles reached their thorny limbs out for her, brushing themselves against her legs. They left cruel, burning imprints. She kept going.
The ground beneath her feet felt deeply unsteady, layers of soft moss drawing her into it, like quicksand in the way it clung to her and pulled her into it. Scared to sink beneath and never return, she began to hurry down at greater speed, until she was almost falling down the steep incline.
Finally, the fall stopped. Thrown forwards by her own momentum, she found herself on the forest floor, feeling her grazed knees fiery and sticky with blood where she had landed. It was alright, she thought - that was an issue for the future version of her.
At present, she had no room for issues to spare.
Though the path had plateaued, she knew she was now deep below the ground level she had previously stood at. The tree trunks and convoluted systems of branches stretched out endlessly above her. There would be no treetops visible — but it wasn’t like that mattered: no light got down here.
None at all.
No sun, at least.
Perfectly still, though still trying to contain her heavy breathing as her lungs pained, she waited.
She had not come down here to enjoy herself.
She was looking for something.
The dark around her hung heavy, uncomfortably dead and motionless.
What if it were to stay? What if it did not leave?
But, finally, there it was: the soft glow of flowers, scattered like stars all across the forest floor.
She felt a knot in the blood vessels of her heart untie as the environment around her was, at last, gradually illuminated.
“There you are,” she whispered, her voice containing a hint of almost-laughter. She reached out a shaky arm in front of her, palm open.
The glowing buds from one of the flowers, which had looked like bluebells, began to depart from their stem, rising gently upwards in front of her eyes as if gliding through water.
They were not bluebells at all.
They were tiny jellyfish.
Thousands of tiny jellyfish, pulsing gently as she stood in the eye of a softly glowing storm.

581 words

Pumpkinfolk - daily #6!

Rooted in the soil, one of many, he slept. The night was still and peaceful. The only movement took the form of a soft mist slipping through the gaps in the fenceposts.
All of a sudden, with a melancholy call into the darkness, a large crow disturbed the tranquility – its feathers rustled as it landed on his firm orange skin.
Neatening its wings back against its sides, it settled itself. Two scaly claws arranged themselves beneath it.
There was a moment of peace once more.
And then something strange happened.
He woke up.
As the crow’s heavy talons pressed into his sweet tender flesh, he felt… pain. The pale juice oozing out of him became like blood.
He felt his own face under his skin, and suddenly he was suffocating – he had never had a face before, but now he had one and it was sealed beneath some tough layer, a part of his own physical form. He began to scream out as best he could – which was not at all – trying to carve apart his own flesh as the feeling of suffocation grew more and more unbearable.
There was a dreadful squelching noise as finally, skin and flesh were torn violently apart.
Pumpkin seeds and guts spilt from his freshly born eye sockets and gaping mouth, innards on show through the slits while he tried to grow accustomed to his new features.

(Too lazy to write coherently but then I wrote a seperate scene lol)

“Who are you?”
He hesitated. He realised he did not know the answer to this question, but he wished to answer it as best he could. He longed more than anything to be a part of the normal people, the everyday folk that he had watched day after day. So he took their words, their beautifully normal words, and tried to employ them as he thought was proper.
“One of You,” he said, but then he could sense that it been wrong, “or, no, not that… one of Them!” he saw that the man’s eyes were piercing into him harder and harder, digging for something more. He had been recognised as… foreign, as something Alien and Other.
Searching for the words in his mind to ease the man's stare, to explain away and justify his existence, he spoke again,
“One of.. the Pumpkinfolk.” he said decidedly.

396 words

Word war #3 ! (Day #6) :>

“Can we stay like this a little longer?”
The sun is sinking below the horizon. We can't, I know we can't. I know that.
“Yeah,” I say.
We lay in the long grass together, legs outstretched in front of us. The warmth of the sun is painful as it sinks below the hills – I can almost see the colours of the sunset flickering and disintegrating before my eyes. Falling to pieces, the paper of some sweet love letter dropped into a softly flowing stream.
We both know I'm lying, really.
The dream has to end soon.
We move closer, almost unconsciously.
“What will we do tomorrow? Another day to do whatever we want. Isn't that marvelous?” I ask, my voice weak, and sickly cheerful.
“Oh, yes, quite,” is the reply, “I imagine we'll go to the sea, and swim beneath the sun, and- oh, and maybe we'll even carry on after dark and let the stars bathe with us,”
“That sounds lovely.” I close my eyes so as not to bear witness to the brushstrokes of the sky and sun fragmenting and fading away from sight. I can keep pretending.
“Or, maybe we'll both lay on the beach together, on our prettiest picnic blanket. Bury each other in the sand,” she says, sleepily. Her voice is quieter than it was before. We're fading.
“Of

224 words - 5 mins

Weekly #1 - 1236 words

i. Poem - 108 words

Moss, in my lungs
Once there will never leave
Written into my flesh
With quills of bracken and bark
Bleeding soft dark mud into the soil
I was here before
I lie in borrowed bones
I'm here still, now
She caresses my head,
Mother that she is
The flies hum a lullaby
And so I sleep
Parallel worlds rest beneath me
That I can only hope to reach someday
As I fade into the earth, I hope to understand
Realms to which I can never belong
The worms are within me
But still, I am never within them
Blood mixed with rainwater
After all, was it worth it?



ii. Lyrics - 273 words
Note: the ‘empty’s were a different word like when something has no clothes but scratch didn't like it. I swear it's just supposed to be describing bare feet & winter trees </3

There’s a boy, he is living in my head
I don't why he's there and I can’t hear what he says
But I know it goes in somewhere
I know there must be a crack, a tear
I know he never runs out of breath
But ever since he's been there
Something in my bones, it asks for death

I do not engage in
The cowardly act of going back to sleep
Tempting the world between my teeth
Juice bursts from my words as i try to speak
Juice bursts from hades’ pomegranate seeds
Spills like blood across my (empty) feet
Blood on the bark of these (empty) trees

It's getting complicated all over again
The boy, he's asked, to be my friend
but i hide from friends in the cold damp dirt
Every time he wants to speak, he makes it worse
Every time he wants to speak, my muscles hurt
The woodlice crawl, deep within my ears
Mind's a stupid thing, why has it let them here

I do not engage in
The cowardly act of going back to sleep
Tempting the world between my teeth
Juice bursts from my words as i try to speak
Juice bursts from hades’ pomegranate seeds
Spills like blood across my (empty) feet
Blood on the bark of these (empty) trees

I heard you say I want to disappear
So I'll do it just to prove sometimes
That I can do exactly what you fear
I'll lie here forever and I'll swallow the dirt
And it tastes like sin and skin and hurt

And I'll try to learn the art
Of going back to sleep



iii. Script - 360 words

The moth and the mouse

(Inside the skirting boards in the kitchen, a mouse is nibbling on a piece of dry cracker. The area is dark and dusty. The entrance is a hole that has been chewed away in the plaster)
(Enter the moth. He is coming in from the kitchen and lands at the entrance hole.)
THE MOTH
Salutations– do forgive me for entering without invitation.
(The mouse appears startled. He drops the piece of cracker and turns to look up at the new arrival)
THE MOUSE
Hello?
THE MOTH
Where is the Great Light?
THE MOUSE
(Hesitates)
I don't… well. Not here, at any rate. Never here.
(The moth turns away towards the kitchen)
THE MOTH
Well, I must find it. Thank you for your hospitality. Farewell!
(The moth salutes with one of his six limbs and goes to flit his wings)
THE MOUSE
(The mouse appears puzzled)
Wait!
(The moth pauses)
THE MOTH
You have information on its whereabouts?
THE MOUSE
Well, no, but– Wait.. please, stay a minute. Tell me who you are?
THE MOTH
Ah, I am sorry, but it remains imperative that I must find it. I must depart.
(The mouse tilts his head to one side)
THE MOUSE
(With curiosity)
Why?
(The moth looks deep in thought for a moment)
THE MOTH
I can't share that information.
THE MOUSE
Right. Of course…
(there is a short silence)
Why not?
THE MOTH
(seemingly taken off guard)
Well, it's.. Well… I don't… I just can't, I'm afraid.
THE MOUSE
You don't know? Because, I've always–
THE MOTH
(annoyed)
Of course I know. It's the most important task of my life. I must find it.
THE MOUSE
But what's the purpose of finding it?
THE MOTH
(Snappily)
What foolish questions. I must find it.
THE MOUSE
I know that part, I just don't see the–
THE MOTH
Someone like you would never be able to see the Greater Meaning! Good day to you!
(The moth exits)
(The mouse is left alone in darkness. He blinks rapidly)
THE MOUSE
How strange…
(The mouse notices the cracker on the ground. He goes to pick it up and starts to nibble it once more)



iiii. Speech - 495 words

“Patient”

It's been winter for one whole year.
Granted, I have fuzzy recollections of blinding sun as we laid on sticky blue gym mats in what had been christened a “garden”. The world hidden from us behind high metal fences, replaced instead by a hap-hazardly hung 2D imitation of nature. The only real thing was the dirt and dead grass beneath us, that we had been forbidden from digging into any longer after our unleashing of an ant's nest.
But a summer spent with its laughter still contained within sickening sterile walls – did it ever really take place? I don't believe so.
I sit here, the 8th of November, and even though I am near 200 miles from where I was, and none of the faces around me remain the same, it may as well be the 8th of last year's November.
It seems impossible that so much has happened and nothing at all has happened in exactly the same span of time. But it's the truth.
365 nights have passed, and it seems to me that each and every one of them has been crumpled up and cast to the fire. Countless different faces, names, beds, rooms, tears, blood, memories, trauma beyond comprehension. And they are all obscured by the smoke.
365 nights, and only one spent in my own bedroom. Only one night left that I desperately cling to in which I spent my time unconscious within familiar walls, walls that I for the prior years of my life had taken for granted. That fact should be painful, and it has been, and will be; but right now it does not affect me, because I cannot begin to grasp how it can possibly be true.

Being in hospital strips you from any sense of belonging. Or perhaps not: it replaces the belonging you once felt with a more insidious version. One of possession: I “belong” to the consultants, to the system, to the ward, to these rooms. My things do not belong to me. I do not belong to myself anymore.

I am an animal, and always have been. But what kind of animal? I can gradually feel myself drifting, I can feel the species I am part of become more akin to “Patient” than “Human”.
Patient. That word. It is a word I come back to again and again. Because truly, it is so fitting. What are we if we are not patient? There is no other choice, as far as I can see. Down and down everything goes, deep into the sinkhole of Waiting. We try battle, and fury, and pleading, and praying to the same gods we have always been praying to, and listening to the same empty words that we have always been listening to, and always it is futile.
And eventually there is nothing left to do except wait – agonising as it is. All other identities taken from our reach, there is nothing left to be, except patient.

Daily #7 (genre mixing but then it became it's own whole short story) - 1353

Ever so slightly

William smiled to himself as he jogged rather clumsily down the painfully grey street, puddlewater splashing up the thick fabric of his best work trousers as he went. But nothing as silly as a bit of water could shake his sense of contentment.
A car shot past, narrowly missing him as he stopped sharply at the curb, pulled abruptly from his own daydreams at the last second. It sprayed him with dirty water.
Ah, it was perfectly okay – it was the weekend now! He felt warm as he imagined the scene. In just a short while he'd be turning the corner onto their road (quite out of breath, for his lack of fitness; although this did not feature in the mundane fantasy he was visualising), strutting gladly up the path to the front door, and falling into her arms with hugs and kisses a plenty.
Lisa, his beloved wife.
Of course, she'd be waiting dutifully at the door like she did every Friday – always the romantic, that Lisa. That was what he loved about her. He would lift her up and spin her around, the two of them still just as in love as the very first days of their romance. Finally they would tumble to a stop, creased over with laughter.
Then he'd step into the house, filled by now with the scent of whatever delectable dish was cooking, all ready and lovingly prepared for his return home.
Blissfully ignorant to the miserable weather, he smiled once more and continued on.

By the time he found himself actually walking up the path to their house, his mind had wandered somewhat to other things, his visions faded – so he was not too dismayed to see that Lisa was not by the door, waiting.
I only hope she's not feeling unwell, he thought to himself.

But then, as he reached his hand out to the gleaming door handle, something else made him stop.

Had their door always been painted blue?

Well, yes, it had, of course it had. What a stupid thought.
But.. was it this shade of blue? Really? It was ever so slightly wrong, but wrong nonetheless. For some reason, it unsettled him deeply.
Lisa must have painted it, he decided. But he was utterly baffled. Why would she take the trouble to do that? It was barely any different! And it wasn't wet, not at all. It looked worn, even, like the old shade of blue paint had been. But it was undeniably a different colour. It didn’t make any sense. He felt himself wracking his brains for some other conclusion to make, but none came. Perhaps there was something wrong with his vision?
Frowning, he made a mental note to ask her about it later, but opened the door and went inside.

His wife was in the kitchen.

He smelt no dinner cooking today, but the muffled sound of the radio guided him towards the room anyway.

He entered their neatly-kept kitchen, and was met with a perfectly normal scene. His wife noticed him and gave a grin, greeting him with an affectionate kiss on the cheek before turning back to whatever she was doing. Yet he felt sick to his stomach. Lisa held a sparkling glass in one hand, an open can of Coca-cola in the other. As she threw her head back laughing at something on the radio, carefree, William felt terribly uneasy.
He could not tear his eyes from the can, from those (darned) swirling white letters inscribed on the red background – which now felt to him more like the bright red warning of some poisonous frog for reasons he could not understand.
It was the wrong font. Ever so slightly, but irrefutably wrong. He knew it was the wrong font, but stared as if somehow he could convince himself it had always looked like that.

His daydreams from earlier had disintegrated. He simply stood, not knowing what to do or say, not knowing why he was filled with such a deep and all-encompassing sense of dread.
“Lisa,” he began – he was going to ask her about the door, but something stopped him, and he trailed off. It wasn't important, anyway…
“Lisa my darling, I…” he hesitated and swallowed, his mouth awfully dry. “I… Oh, I see you've bleached your hair again? How wonderful,” he said with relief, having searched desperately for a change of topic to distract himself and finding just the thing for it. Her roots had been growing through for a while, and he noticed with a flutter that her perfect curls were now blonde again right to the scalp. Not that she was any less beautiful with her natural, gorgeous brown hair, but.. there was something about the blonde locks framing her face that had always given him butterflies.

“No…” Lisa said, frowning and turning to glance at her reflection in the glass of the kitchen cabinet, “Do I look lighter? It must be the sun, it's been so bright recently,”

“Your roots – you've touched them up!” he laughed nervously. She was joking with him, of course. But everything had suddenly felt so off, he was on edge.
“My roots?” she smiled, looking puzzled, “You mean the pink..? Well that's been grown out for months, love, no roots here. Do you think I should go back? I’ve been quite liking my natural colour, you know, although–” she began to waffle on and on but her voice was fading into the background with everything else behind the ringing in William's ears. It sounded like the wailing of some dreadful piece of machinery.

“You are not blonde. You bleach it.” he said suddenly, and she stopped mid-sentence.
“What-? I think I'd know if–” she began laughingly but then glimpsed the hollow, serious expression that was plastered on her husband's face.
“Are you quite alright, Will?”
“Yes. Fine.” He murmured. The statement was not true in the slightest. He was deeply, deeply, disturbed.

She opened her mouth to respond but he spoke up again,
“And, no. No it hasn’t. It hasn’t been bright weather at all.”
His voice had something dark and gravelly to it, and Lisa backed away. All of a sudden, he turned on her.
“What is going on? Lisa, what the hell is going on? Everything is wrong today, wrong ever so slightly, and I can handle it no more. Tell me what is going on, at once.”

Lisa only shrunk into herself as he grew louder and louder towards her. And then he cried out,
“I must wake up from this!”
And suddenly, he heard a voice that was decidedly Lisa’s, but seemed to not to come from her at all.

“Oh I do wish you could just wake up from this… Please wake up…”

The voice came from all directions, shaking him from within his very bones. It sounded distant, like someone speaking submerged underwater.

The room seemed to freeze. The ringing in his ears started up again, growing louder and louder. Except this time, it did not fade – in fact, it began to beep, on and off, on and off. This time it was unmistakably the noise of a machine.

The Lisa in front of him gave a sad smile.
“Lisa…” he said uncertainly, “where are you?”

“Out,” replied the Lisa in front of him, still with the artificial smile plastered across her lips.

The kitchen, familiar as ever, despite all its details being ever so slightly wrong, began to fall apart.

Blinding bright lights and sterile white walls were leaking through the cracks.

“If only he'd been more careful,” he heard his wife – the Other Lisa – say, sobbing, “always in such a daydream coming back from work,”

“Oh, sweetheart,” another unfamiliar voice came, trying to offer comfort, “well, he's not suffering. He was likely brain dead as soon as it hit him,”

Gargled sobbing and crying and cold comforts faded into the background hum of the world.

William felt himself sinking into the hospital bed. Down down down, he sank below it and past the floor. A warm darkness embraced him, and then nothing did anymore.

Critique !! For z3phy_th3_cr4zy , thank you so much for doing this critiquaire with me : D

858 words (not including the original extracts <3)

Okay, so the first thing I'd like to just say is, woah, well done on this piece! I think it's extremely well thought out and I really enjoyed reading it. The story is very compelling and it was honestly very difficult to look at this objectively to critique it because I liked it so much.
The characters are really strong, which is incredibly impressive in my opinion to get such a good sense of character across through a story/poem formatted in this way. The writing really draws you in, I personally felt like it would be pretty impossible for anyone to stop reading this halfway through and leave it, and I have a terrible attention span lol.

After some thought, I think there are a few things that jump out at me for improvement. In places it is quite wordy in a way that detracts from the piece and I think I would focus on trying to streamline your writing to more effectively communicate your point.

At some points the timeline feels confusing, and though this could be an interesting tool for your structure and tie in with the amnesia, the execution at certain points just doesn't really work and feels repetitive while not really getting across what is happening. I wasn't sure what was going on near the middle-end when Florian is revealed as the perpetrator and Lois is there and back and there and back again, while you've used repetition really well in the style for a lot of this writing, there was also some repetition especially in the narrative and description that didn't really add anything to the story and just felt a bit clumsy.

A few specific things I noted to comment on:

>I don't
His eyes were sharp
blue and bold
that's about all I can recall
the memories blur together and all I see
is blue<

I really like this last line! I thought it was simple but still really conveyed that sense of the narrator's memories being obscured and consumed by one detail – it's really nice and I felt I was very much able to experience just what she was experiencing and what the text was describing.
However, I felt there was a little too much explanation here, which makes the prose feel clunky. Try and have a little trust in your reader to interpret the work themselves, especially in a form of poetry/verse like this piece, and leave some of the writing up to them to infer what is happening, rather than explaining everything throughout. E.g: a change to

“I don't
His eyes were sharp
The memories blur together
And all I see
Is blue”

still communicates to the reader that it is the perpetrator's eyes that were blue, and that it is the only thing the narrator can remember, while not feeling too overwritten. Word count isn't everything ehe ;]

>thoughts shift back and forth
like waves on an ocean
they blink clearly
what happened?<

A small technical note – this is the only part of the verse where the starting words of the line are not capitalised, which doesn't seem like a creative choice, so try to remain consistent with your formatting.

>I woke up in that hospital bed
Tears drove down my face
Mama and Papa yell that I'm awake<

I'm not sure whether it was the intention or not but I really like this line as it reads like she's being yelled at, and then you realise they are just yelling in general at the fact she's awake – it really gets you into the character's head and her state of confusion. It adds depth and layers to the text and I think you could definitely play on this a little more and incorporate more elements like this throughout your writing.

I will say this section is somewhat confusing in terms of tense - it starts in past tense but then switches to present. I would recommend changing it to
“I wake up in that hospital bed
Tears drive down my face
Mama and Papa yell that I'm awake”
To keep in line with how the piece continues from this, although you could also change all of these lines to be past tense if you want to convey that this has passed and the next paragraph is her current thoughts.

>Life flashes
Boom BOom BOOm BOOM BOOOM BOOOOM BOOOOOM BOOOOOOM BOOOOOOOM
The booms loom and do nothing but consume
I'm drifted away<

Nitpicky thing: the rhyming “The booms loom” has a rather jarring almost comedic effect that doesn't fit the tone of the piece at all, maybe this was intentional but the rest of it seems to have no rhyming scheme. I feel like it detracts from the onomatopoeia of the actual booms which I thought was very effective and a good element to incorporate – I would perhaps consider changing it to something like “the noise”

>Mama and Papa have disappeared
They do not care again
The same as always
The same
The absolute
SAME
They never did care
I call them Mama and Papa
They will never be Mom or Dad
Foster parents don't deserve that recognition
But they try
or so that's what they think<

I don't think “I call them Mama and Papa” is necessary here, as we've already seen her refer to them as Mama and Papa in several previous lines. The repetition may be intentional but I think if this is what you're going for it could be achieved just with a line like
“Mama and Papa
They will never be Mom or Dad”

Apologies these are only extracts from the very start of the piece (I may have written too much and then didn't have time to do the same kind of analysis for the whole text lol) but I think the general critiques and praise I had for these bits can be pretty much applied to the rest of the piece too. :]

With all that said, you really should be very proud of this writing!! And thank you again c:

Daily #10 - if “touch grass” was a daily basically ?? ;] 297 words

I read some of my current reading book that I only started yesterday, it's called The Moustache by Emmanuel Carrère. I've been really into books and stories with similar themes to this recently. I'm almost done (although to be fair it's quite a short book) and it's getting really tense at the point where I'm at, though I've found the whole book extremely engaging! A man shaves off his moustache, which he's had for years and years, to surprise and play a joke on his wife – but she doesn't notice, and when he questions her about it she pretends he never had a moustache in the first place. Or is she pretending? No one else in his life believes he ever had a moustache either, and he begins to think that either he is going mad or his wife has told everyone they know to keep up this pretence and convince him that he is insane. Eventually this questioning of reality spreads to other aspects of his life, friends that apparently never existed, trips that never happened, and even the death of his father whom he believed was perfectly alive. He grows more and more untrusting of everyone and everything around him and starts to make up extreme explanations and go to extreme lengths to escape from these terrifying beliefs. It is a very very interesting book and I'm very excited to finish it.
I don't want to give spoilers up to this point, but honestly I'm really not sure how it will ultimately end. I definitely would recommend giving it a read if the premise sounds interesting at all, so far it's been a super compelling story and from my interpretation if you peel back the layers it's a really fascinating exploration of memory and reality :]

(Also update: since I wrote this this morning I finished reading it, brooooooo. what a book)

Daily #13 - 312 words

No one liked to see despair.
So, really, it was a good thing no one truly had to.
They saw the effect it had, sure – they watched how it tore into people's hearts and homes, how it loomed over communities and families. Whether ripping them apart or herding them up together in one corner like cattle, it was there, its presence undeniable. Everyone could see that. But despair itself? No.
It was a silent and unseen thing, hanging just below the clouds and just above everything that rested, perfectly static and still, beneath them. It hung there patiently until, only when in the depths of agony, it was to encroach upon one of the lives below.
And then it would be seen.
The colours that despair painted the world with were to cause a depth of pain beyond words.
It should have been feared more than anything else, blocked out by any means possible by anyone who ever even felt a lonely tear from one of its invisible eyes drip on their skin or felt a cold hand resting gently on their shoulders. Let alone anyone who had ever encountered it.
And yet.
It was softly accepted.
As much as no one had ever liked to see it, sometimes as they lay blind, there was a yearning.
It was a strangely delicious thing. Hollow coldness cloaked it, but deep within, there was a peculiar warmth.
I am sorry, it said.
I am here now, and nothing else is.
And it would fold you into its embrace. The embrace that was a comfort against the way the world cruelly continued on amid blurred galaxies locked in one's mind. A deep, deep ocean to sink beautifully into. A form of oxygen to breathe for only those with gills; the very gills that had been slashed hard through their ribs and into their aching lungs.

Criticiquaire for CatOrchid (original piece is “Voracity”) - 770 words

Hello! : D Thank you so much for doing this with me!
Firstly, I want to say I really enjoyed reading this piece, it was very cool. 5 stars!! Let's get into the critique:

I really love the start of this piece, I think this is an extremely strong opening!
Now… I'm going to be possibly a little annoying by mentioning “show don't tell”, I'm sure we've all heard it so many times lol.
I feel like the opening utilises this really well – we infer from the fact that her hands are shaking how she feels whilst picking up the pot, and we can immediately pick up from the text that something has happened without being directly told yet, which draws in your reader as a point of interest and intrigue.

However, I think the writing then moves away from this a bit, and just makes a lot of statements in a row. Many of the sentences seem somewhat unlinked to each other. Like, it's very “X was x. She did x.” etc. if you see what I mean.
I really like your use of language devices and imagery, but perhaps try and vary the sentence structure a little more for interest and to make the story flow – and *show* us more things to infer from rather than simply directly explaining each step of the narrative.

Also, slight tangent from the point, but one thing I noticed throughout was how much you wrote Lupine's name rather than her pronouns, it might just be me but I felt like it made for a very jarring reading experience considering there's no one else we could really be confusing her for. This can definitely be a personal choice and maybe even could be employed intentionally in a piece of writing to discomfort the audience, but for it to feel natural here I'd recommend referring to your character less by name as it feels disruptive to the flow of the writing.

For how the flowers and their meanings flow within the story, I think a place where this is done well is the sentence “Bushes of light pink oleander graced the entrance. The long, dark leaves and soft, curling petals of the plant whispered warnings of danger.” I really like this, it incorporates the meaning of the flowers and also builds a really strong image of the setting! The flowers don't feel implanted or forced into the writing, they just flow into the description. It's an elegant use of personification for them and implying how they make her feel about entering the cave.

There are other places where I think you could benefit from trying to incorporate the flowers using similar techniques. For example, “Her eyes landed on a stalk of foxglove, bright dropping purple flowers amid the ash. Treachery. Her gaze hardened as she drew a dagger from her belt.” As it is, this mention of the foxglove doesn't really seem to add much to the story, and seems out of place and noticeable. Try showing us how this actually makes Lupine feel and what effect the sight of this flower is actually enacting on the story.
(Otherwise, it just seems like it is only there because it needed to be inserted in for the daily's challenge lol which doesn't make for the most cohesive piece.)

When the old woman hands her the Hellebore, it seems rather out of nowhere – it leaves a lot of questions about who she is and why she randomly decided to do this, but this is something the narrative does not at all acknowledge. Note: you *don't* have to actually answer questions such as these in your piece, it's often a great thing to have mysteries for the reader! But I would in some way acknowledge that these questions are *present*; it doesn't really make that much sense to just happen out of the blue and for the narrative to accept this. You could instead try to guide the reader to wonder about these things :]

You also mentioned the pacing! I can understand your concerns about the ending feeling rushed, but honestly in this piece of writing I don't have much to say about it to improve haha. Personally, I actually thought the “rushed” feeling worked rather well with the structure – it almost mirrored the feeling of the power and madness from the artifact rushing to Lupine's head and the frenzy she's in. It works with that part of the story taking place almost in a blur/uncontrollably.

All in all, you are most certainly a very skilled writer, and I hope any of this could be helpful <33

Weekly #2 in progress

Research - 321/200 words

What did it mean? – The Neolithic (meaning “new stone") period in Britain marked the shift from a hunter-fisher-gatherer way of life (the Mesolithic period – “middle stone age”) to settled agricultural communities. It lasted from around 4100 BC - 2000 BC. This new practice of farming arrived from continental Europe. The entire culture changed, with new pottery, tools, and funerary practices being introduced.
Plants – Early farmers grew wheat and barley, which could be used to make flour. Some farmers grew beans and peas too. Others also grew flax, which can be used to make linen for clothes.
Animals – They had herds of cattle that had been domesticated from wild cows for beef, milk, and cheese. They had sheep and goats for meat, milk, and wool. They also domesticated wild pigs. They had dogs which herded sheep and cattle and were used as watchdogs – it is likely that dogs were treated as family pets like they are today.
Homes – Most Neolithic houses consisted of one round room and were built with wooden frames, but where trees were hard to come by, they also built houses from stone. They would have cosy roofs of turf and bracken. The furniture they built would include things like a central fireplace, seats, beds, and even shelves.
Graves – The bones of the dead were stored in tombs called long barrows, built from stone and covered in a mound of earth.
Monuments – During this period, Neolithic people also began to build stone circles. Causewayed enclosures also appeared.
Tools - Polished stone axes allowed for forest clearance for agriculture, and wood for houses and fuel. They also had leaf-shaped arrowheads, and developed pottery of different types.
Language - Neolithic people in Britain would have spoken a form of Proto-Indo-European language, which eventually evolved into the Celtic languages. There were likely different dialects and variations of this, spoken across different regions of Britain.
Communities - Neolithic groups in Britain were small, possibly of only 50-100 people.



Description - 460/400 words

Flames licked the stone of the crude fireplace that contained it. Tendrils of smoke filled the rounded room, painting everything within with a vague but lingering earthy, wooden scent — it was a soothing blanket of gently burnt moss and damp bark. Outside, the light leaked feebly into the grass just beyond the doorway, but was smothered swiftly by darkness. A cold wind swept through the moors, rippling across acres of farmland and disappearing into the wood beyond.

The house sat firmly in the centre of this land; a land that seemed to stretch into eternity until it merged into the night sky. Several other wooden huts of the same comforting round shape lay scattered beside, as if mirroring the constellations. It was a simple structure, but it offered all that it needed to. The fireplace was rarely left unlit when there was a chill threatening the night, and even if it was, embers pulsed and continued to promise their warmth anyway. It was windowless but protected, and the bracken roof had yet to yield to the beating fists of rain and wind. It wrapped itself dutifully round its occupants each dusk as they slept, and perhaps even tried its best to give way to their delicate forms, attempting to soften the firm surfaces they rested on. It was a dwelling that could be trusted.

Between these different huts, cobbles and dirt paths twisted into an intricate web. They wound themselves amongst the animal pens and crops of carefully sown seeds, guiding footsteps across barren heathland or leading them into dense forest.

Through a row of tightly packed trees, a mound of earth had pushed itself up to make a small imitation of a proud hillside. Around it, a clearing had formed, as if the trees had shrunk themselves away, bowing to the gods of the dirt, upon sensing some deep ancient power. A stone circle was set firmly atop. It was reminiscent of a crown, perhaps the crown of a long-sunken beast of the soil.
Moss clung to the rocks, stretching desperate fingers into a collage of natural crevices intertwined with careful spiral carvings that could now barely be told apart.

Between the stones, at the base of the mound, was a dark chamber entrance. It was set deep into the earth, and the turf spilled over the front so that it was almost hidden – almost appearing as the unassuming entrance to a fox den or badger sett. Almost hiding its true purpose. A barrow tomb.

Looking out from upon the hill, at the centre of the clearing and the centre of the circle, a vast patchwork of fields and forests revealed itself. Only the blank mists that crept up around the horizon allowed the land to keep its secrets.



Character - 402 /400 words

Mora is a girl living in a small farming community in Neolithic Britain. The people of the settlement have a dog known as Arn to help herd the sheep and cattle, but Mora harbours a lot of affection for him and believes they share a deep bond, so she has grown to become his primary “owner”. He sleeps in her family's hut at night, and often she curls up beside him or he rests at the foot of where she sleeps. Although he is cared for by their group as a whole, she likes to slip him extra strips of the meat or grains that they farm.
Mora spends much of her time helping to cultivate the land, picking the crops and looking after the livestock. They also must painstakingly process the flax that they harvest and eventually weave it into fabrics.

While she enjoys this lifestyle most of the time – after all, it's all she has ever known – part of her yearns to go into the wilderness and untouched land. She doesn't feel fully content in their settlement and somewhat distant. She puts this down to the fact that ever since she was a young infant she has had strange and fantastical dreams each night of exploring and wandering through the dense forests and wild landscape, although she always finds the details difficult to recall. As a result of this seemingly unshakeable desire, she also spends a significant amount of time away from the group, taking Arn with her. Often she doesn't even realise she has begun to wander, but nevertheless finds herself wandering the surrounding area of where she lives, sometimes further, even though the two of them are both needed in the group.

She is fascinated by the natural world, and uses her stone tools to carve small replicas of the animals and birds that she sees from branches and sometimes even from sheep or cattle bones. Over time she's become extremely skilled at this and her carvings are surprisingly beautiful.
Another strong connection she feels is towards the dead. Whilst when one of the members of their small community is to pass away she never outwardly seems to be affected in particular, she can often be found at the burial chamber that lies nearby to the farmland. Her dreams of wilderness frequently include visions of death and feature those who have experienced it returning to speak to her.


Story was written on paper and I now cannot be bothered to transcribe it since this weekly didn't end up counting sob, approx 700 words!

.


Have you ever watched a human body burn?
I have.

That first time: it's still etched into the inside of my skull, still forever there in the form of crude markings tattooed directly onto the wrinkles of my mind.
For what felt like a lifetime afterwards, I tried to scrub it as hard as I could from my memory, but there it remained, just as present and now altogether more raw and red and angry. Eventually I had to let it stay; it settled itself there and I simply did my best to avoid it.

I can describe to you what happens to your body when you are burnt.

The way that the flames peel back your first skin as if skinning a fruit – it falls away from the body as simply as scraping bark from a tree. That second layer of skin shrinking as your soft tissues shrivel, splitting open, fat leaking out, oozing into the fire from out of torn dermis, just to be incinerated.
The way the muscles contract. Long past any flicker of recognition to what once was, I’m forced to face how this physical vessel will continue to contort, a kind of horrifying undead life form betraying the agency you once possessed over your own movement. Control is no longer yours.
The way that everything once so familiar takes on a suddenly alien appearance, sinks distinctly away from being human as it is licked by flame.
The blackened, melted creature that you seem to become for several long, long, moments just before you become nothing.
I could continue. I could go on and on and describe in every excruciating detail exactly what would take place, the decomposition that would happen after you had barely breathed your last breath – I can tell you these things.

But the putrefying kind of utter sickness that makes itself a home in the bottom of your stomach? The hollow feeling that presses against the sides of a vast cavity that, at some point, has opened in your chest, where you are sure you can feel the beginnings of embers starting to sear your organs?
That, I can never describe to you. You will have to watch.

I remember that I couldn't tear my eyes away from it, even in spite of the nauseating horror that encompassed me. I remember his noise, the gargling, and then how it ceased. More than anything else, I remember the smell. It burnt my nostrils. The smell of something no longer human, something that could not be a He anymore. Reduced to flesh. To meat.

That was the first time. I'll remember that.

I don't remember how many times it has been now. They all blend into one. Now, they do nothing to me, except make me feel faintly empty.

A thought vaguely floats around my head and I catch it as it rises up, that maybe I should be repulsed by this, that I should go away and curl up into a ball of anguish directed at my own mind. That I should, in fact, be horribly ashamed and disgusted by the apathy that has come to settle itself in my chest over these years.
I imagine shaking myself out of a sickly stupor, waking up and stepping into lucidity, aghast at what has become of me.
But I don't do this.
The feeling tugs at my ribs feebly for a few drawn out moments, and then drifts away. Or maybe I am the one who steps away from it. Either way, the outcome is the same.

I suppose you truly can grow accustomed to anything. Any manner of horrors can worm their way inside your life and slip on a skin of normality.
This is unsettling, in a way, but also strangely comforts me. I like to know that even if I were to find myself in the depths of hell, my mind would at some point gently slip a soft blanket around me, cover my eyes and say, you're okay. this is okay, it's all okay. this is how it is now. and that's fine.
683 words so far

adolescent unit

she is rotten.
the place she is housed smells like death
the way a nursing home does
sickly sweet words lingering on everyones breath
pleasant fragrances stale in the corridors
and yet it does nothing to mask the distinctive scent that betrays it
everyone living here is dying
slowly, from the inside out, but with a certainty

(poem of 59 words)

Daily #17 ! - 195 words

A recipe for saltwater

1) Gather your ingredients. You will need:

1 ½ pairs of old glasses - one snapped in half
1 heap of clothes at the foot of the stairs
a generous handful of leaves, picked from the ivy at the bottom of the yard
3 white towels that wait to be folded
1 hot water bottle that still clings onto its contents, long gone cold
5 forever-lost scrabble tiles under the dresser
1 smudged charcoal portrait, unfinished
4 yellowed photographs, faces obscured by the wear of time
8 brushes encrusted with paint
2 already-passed concert tickets. never used
1 hand embroidered bookmark, left for eternity in the final chapter of its dog eared novel
2 packets of garden seeds on the cabinet that were never sown
7 colourful plastic compartments filled with out-of-date medication
one large pile of unopened envelopes and flyers in the hallway
your selection of the fruit that moulds away in the fruit bowl
the dust that has gathered.
(add to taste)

2) Stare at the assortment that lies before you.
3) Break apart the ingredients in your hands until they disintegrate.
4) Mix until you lose track of time.

Outcast // dystopia //a place from childhood // in media res


449


Cole was going to die. After all, there was nothing else left to do.
For hours she'd been saving her breath, trying not to use up the very last of the breathable air, restricting herself to the slowest and shallowest of inhales. She had not been allowed to feel, not even for a second, because that would mean wasting breath. But now, she could hold out no more.
What did it matter anyway, now, how long there was left? All was lost. It might as well be over and done with.
She collapsed onto the worn out floorboards in great wet sobs. Once it began, she could not stop it – she felt herself reduced to a lowly heap of skin and saltwater. Every muscle in her broken body screamed whilst the long building tension was at last released.
In shaking hands, she grasped the broken picture frame in front of her. It was the only thing left. The bedroom of her childhood had been reduced to ruin, scraps of memories strewn everywhere she glanced. The torn face of her once-beloved teddy stared at her from a corner, slightly charred. Its expression was still kind, but though it had never been alive, all she could see as it watched her was something that was dead. Tears rolled down the photograph as if the people within were in fact the ones crying, so deeply sorry they were to have left her.
No. They would never be sorry, she thought to herself bitterly. Well, for being regretful that she was still here, perhaps – how ironic that her very outcasting, her labelling as something unworthy, should be the thing to keep her going so far past the rest of them? It would always come eventually, though. She knew that.
She clutched it tighter and tighter, folding it into her chest as hard as she could, as if it could somehow help her, until bright beads of red liquid began to seep from her palms. The broken glass was digging into her flesh now but she could hardly feel it and only went on crying and choking on her own sorrow and pain, making such unearthly sounds that it was barely plausible they had come from her at all.
The universe was closing in, more and more.
She heard her own voice echoing outside her head, calling out at a god that she did not believe in.
Save me, save me, save me.
The outside further drew further closed upon her room that floated solitary in the abyss.
I am coming, I am coming, I am coming, it said.
I am here, I am here, I am here.
Saving you, saving you, saving you.