Raziel

John was beginning to wonder if the forest Paul found online even existed.
“The directions say that we should have seen the trail entrance a mile ago,” John said. He was sitting in the passenger seat and closely read the printed out directions that he held in his hands.
“There’s no way. I haven’t seen…” Paul froze and realized that he had been driving for so long that he stopped looking for the trail. He had simply focused on the horizon and made himself believe that he could reach it. He then remembered that he had noticed out of the corner of his eye a large dirt trail off to the left side of the road about a mile back. He felt a burning embarrassment overtake him. He always prided himself as being a leader-type. Seldom did he make mistakes. John had probably been looking down at the map when they passed it. Elizabeth was asleep in the back seat. She had short dark brown hair that covered half of her face while she slept, her head against the window. John saw a skinny path of dirt ahead off to the right side of the road but didn’t think that it could possibly be the trail that they were searching for. Paul wasn’t going to say what he knew. He couldn’t. The embarrassment would engulf him.
“Could that be it?” John said, squinting ahead.
“I think so,” Paul said, slowing down and pulling off to the side of the road as he reached the small dirt trail. The old Jeep began shaking as it left the road and Elizabeth woke up.
“Are we here?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
“Yeah,” Paul said.
“Are you sure?” John asked. “I mean, I hardly even noticed this trail from the road. It doesn’t even look like anyone’s been through here.”
“It’s the right trail,” Paul said, opening his door and moving to the back of the Jeep to get his gear. “Come on. We should get moving so that we have time to set up before the sun goes down.” John and Elizabeth got their gear and Paul locked the Jeep up. All three of them then started down the narrow trail that led into the forest filled with dying trees whose leaves spiraled down, down to their feet.
They had walked for an hour following no specific path before reaching a large patch with dead leaves strewn about it. Paul decided this would be a good place to set up camp. None of them had really talked during the whole walk and it was only after they discovered the place where they would be spending the night that Elizabeth said something.
“So how are we going to find our way back?” she asked. No one had thought about this on their way in for some reason. There was a long pause and Paul responded.
“We can find our way back,” Paul replied.
“But how?” she asked.
“I remember how we got here,” he said.
“That’s impossible! We’ve been walking for an hour!” she yelled.
“Ok, just calm down. We’ll find our way back. There’s nothing we can do about it now,” he said. “We just need to focus on building a tent and getting a fire going before it gets dark.” Elizabeth walked away and beyond a few trees until she was out of sight. “Where are you going!?” Paul yelled.
“Just let her go,” John said. “Let’s get started on the tent.” John and Paul pulled out the material for the tent and began constructing it. A few minutes later Elizabeth returned.
“Where’d you go?” Paul asked.
“I had to pee,” she said. “I looked around, too. There’s plenty of firewood we can use.” Paul looked at her hands and saw that they were full of dried sticks. She threw them into the center of the patch when John panicked.
“I have to go back,” John said.
“Why?” Paul asked.
“My watch. I must have dropped it on our way here.”
“But it’s just a watch,” Paul said. “It’ll be dark soon.” John looked at the sky, noting the bright sun. “Don’t let the sun fool you, John. It’ll be dark soon.”
“It’s the watch Stacy gave me yesterday. I have to go get it,” John said, not listening to what Paul had just said.
“Listen, just wait until morning. You won’t be able to find your way back once it’s dark,” Paul said.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Paul’s right.” John didn’t care, though. He had to find the watch. He went through his backpack and pulled out a flashlight. Paul and Elizabeth realized that there was nothing they could do and let him walk off into the trees.
John had walked for almost an hour, following the steps that he remembered taking to get to the large patch with Paul and Elizabeth, but everything looked the same and there was no distinct path to follow. To his left seemed to be the mirrored trees of his right, all blackened and motionlessly writhing. He continuously scanned the ground to look for his watch and soon realized that the ground was only becoming darker. Night was approaching and he had no idea where he was. He had not found his watch and darker, darker his surroundings became. Black. His flashlight didn’t work. Black. He didn’t know which direction was which. Everything was the same. To his left was the mirrored black of his right. John smelled something familiar. Nights at Stacy’s house when they would sit in front of the fireplace and eventually fall asleep in each other’s arms. John saw the orange tips of flames rising above trees in the distance and followed them. He walked slowly until he reached their source.
John stood before a spectacle that both confused and frightened him. He peered between two trees and could see three figures move silently against the light of a large fire whose flames licked the night sky like searing tongues. He heard chilling screams; those that he instantly knew were Elizabeth’s. He looked left and saw Elizabeth tied to a tree. Next to her was Paul’s disemboweled body. John didn’t accept this as reality. One of the figures turned and faced John. Its face was pure black. Its body was pure black. It moved silently toward John and Elizabeth stopped screaming. John closed his eyes and focused on the deep and true black that this absence of sight gave him.

gohn67

hey Raziel,

The story is not too bad. It has potential to be a good story with some revision though.

Nice description of Stacey in pt1.

You have a nice writing style. You do a good job of giving color to your narrator, and I like how you wrote the backstory in pt1. Overall I think the writing was stronger in part pt1 than two. Your writing style suffers when you rush though, and for parts of pt2, it felt that way. Take more time with it and develop the story and characters more. Give us more details of this forest place.

One thing that would make this a bit readable as I suggested in my last prose is to double space after every paragraph. The other thing that makes this piece difficult to read is your choice of paragraph breaks, especially in the dialogue, which appears kind of random, and makes it kind of confusing to read. Here's a good tutorial on proper dialogue format - http://www.writingforums.com/showthread.php?t=59763

I gather that repetition of the searing tongues simile was intentional and means something, but it sounded awkward to me like you ran out of similes to use and recycled one. But at the same time I'm pretty sure there's a good reason for it.

This was kind of jarring, and felt like it shifted out of Stacey's POV. But this one is kind ambiguous because that line could easily be what Stacey believes. Just that the wording makes me think that we briefly jump into her POV.

There are few things I noticed about the plot that seemed off to me.

-Maybe I'm the only one that finds it kind of odd, but why did she sleep with him when her grandmother is so ill? It's not really that that I have a problem with, but more because she cares enough about her grandmother to go see her. Obviously her grandmother is really important to her because her parents died in a car wreck. So I don't understand why she would spend the night with John on his birthday. Her grandmother seems pretty ill, and to me seems like she would be sitting by her grandmother's bedside until she got better. I hope that made some sense, but also at the same time this is only my opinion.

-I don't understand the long backstory with Stacey, though I did like it. For one it goes out of POV of John, who's POV we are in for most of the story. I can kind of see why you did it, because it is yet another person that Stacey loses, but is it Stacey's story or John's? At the sametime I think the whole car crash thing feels unbelievable, kind of like jeez she has a lot of bad luck in her family.

-In pt2, I think you need to parse the scenes with a space break. It is confusing how much time passes in this section. Also most of the scenes seems half finished. Probably could use some more description so they do not seem like talking heads.

-John's realization that he lost the watch is kind of sudden and for no reason. Maybe works in real life, but for a story there needs to be some kind of chain of event that leads to it.

-PT2 Stacey is pretty much forgotten until the watch. From pt1 I thought that maybe John would be thinking about how much he missed Stacey or something.

-The supernatural thing, I was expecting but still I'm not sure what's the point of it. It seems random to me. Unless I guess these supernatural spirits are responsible for killing everyone that Stacey loves or something. Otherwise I find it too coincidental that they chose this haunted forest to camp in. The opening paragraph makes me think that's the case but I don't know.

I realize that this is pretty harsh. But I hope it's somewhat helpful. At the same time you should do what you think is right. This is only my opinion and I'm just an amatuer writing with nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon.

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The Frowning Dog Blog

Raziel

Thanks a lot for taking the time to read my stuff. I didn't find it harsh at all. I did write this in pretty much one sitting. Maybe it's not clear in the story, but Stacy does stay with her grandmother, which is why she couldn't go on then trip. I agree and have actually thought of a lot of your criticisms before you even said them, because I definately do want to stretch out a lot of the story (especially what's in part 2). Also, I thought I'd mention that I only broke the story up into 2 parts because I didn't want to submit the whole thing in one thread. Thanks for taking so much time to reply. It was helpful