Industrial

It is often that I find myself in distant places devoid of beauty and stripped of purpose. It is even more often that my mind plays cruel and despairing tricks on me, which lead me deep into the warped hallways of insanity. I now am left to wander these demented hallways where my mind contorts reality with horrors that leave me crippled with anguish. I was not always in a state of mental suffocation; I once had a life of continuity, a life where I could distinguish reality from horror; but that life is as distant and faded as a dying star on the edge of a dark dying universe.

My life once consisted of a dull menial routine. A routine I took for granted. What I would give to wake up finally and once again watch the graceful doves infest the top of oppressive buildings like maggots squirming and multiplying. But above all, I desire the truth about my love, Laura.

I often think about my past life, the life I shared in bliss with Laura. But the sad truth is I know not if it ever existed as more then a fictitious dream. For it is long ago that my mind started to toy and twist with reality. I have many lives, each one seems even more dismal and oppressive then the other. Each one seems to remind me how life in actuality is devoid of beauty. But there was one dream that gave me hope, the one dream I lived in happiness with Laura.

But alas this life was ripped away from me like an aborted fetus. Now my mind dares to play cruel tricks on me. My mind dares to tell me that Utopian life never existed, and is no more then one of my many fictitious afflictions. My mind even dares to constantly confront me with her presence only to make my other lives even more dull and despairing.

Every night I must face thoughts and realities that I should be perfectly content to never let pass though my mind. Every night I find myself with her, only to be horribly woken up and constantly mocked by my sub-conscious. It has come to the point where I am not sure; I lost my ability to tell the difference from a dream along time ago.

I can not bare this feeling of not knowing reality from fiction. So it is now that I sit alone on my bed refusing to sleep, refusing to once again be subject to horrors beyond imagination. I have only one way to find truth and end this evolved nightmare. Is she real and is there more to life then this delirious mortifying state? I’m about to find out using the only tool at my disposal, a fully loaded 22 caliber rifle. I am fully convinced that I am stuck within a dream world, for no world could be so devoid of hope. I am either right and will soon wake up to my sweet Laura, or my mind has succeeded in playing the cruelest trick of all.

I can only end my life with the hope that this will cease my cruel mind and not leave me eternally trapped within the twisted hallways of the sub-conscious.

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That's just more ammo for my arsenal.

panicnight26

interesting

Industrial

rofl thanks, thats what I want my stories to be!.

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That's just more ammo for my arsenal.

righter222

Your writing forces me to think about things. I really liked this story.

Cristina P

Reads a lot like a journal entry. I wonder if Laura could out-dance Shakira... hmm..

Might be a bit too metaphor-heavy...

Malone

I don't wanna come down on you too hard, because this isn't that bad, but it really feels like you're trying to force something "literary" here. Metaphor after metaphor after metaphor. I know you said you were young in another post, and I think you're trying to make this a little too dramatic and artsy. I know people who have killed themselves, and people who have sat with a gun in their mouth (I'm in AA, lots of them there), and there really isn't anything artsy about it. It's kids finding their dads hanging from a rope after dinner, or such desperation and hopelessness that you sit in the garage, drink a bottle of whiskey, and bite a .45. This guy is just annoying, killing himself over a girl? That's kind of pathetic and just made me not like him.
Doves and maggots don't seem to go well together. Kind of threw me off while reading it.
A .22? And a rifle? That small caliber in that length of gun gives a strong chance this guy could live through it if he actually pulls the trigger. I guess you were thinking he'd use his toe or something? I'd change it to a handgun of a bigger caliber.
It's not bad. I'll chalk it up to inexperience and trying to hard. I try to be pretty honest in my critiques, so I hope I didn't come off too harsh. Keep writing! I think you have potential.


edit:
Thought about this story a little more. I think the best way to go about this (what I think you're trying to do) is to rewrite it much more abstract. We had a guy on here who wrote some really cutting edge abstract stuff in this vein, name VooDoo, but he got banned for some reason. If you search the forums, you might be able to find some of his stuff. I've got a friend who writes some pretty cutting edge stuff too, I'll try to see if he will let me share some with you. From this piece, I think I know what you want to be as a writer, and hopefully I'll be able to dig up a good example for you.

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There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed

Industrial

I appreciate your review Malone, however there is one thing I wanted to clear up. I wanted to make this story so the focus was really not on the girl. The reason he commits suicide in the story is because he does not know if any life he lives is actually real or a fabrication from his mind. I added the girl as a way of emphasizing the fact that the other dreams and lives he cant distinguish from reality all seem more harsh and cold; similar to the concept of the higher you are, the worse the lower area will seem like when you fall.

I thought the dove/maggot metaphor reinforced the idea of the story, that everything is multi sided and actually ugly and devoid of beauty.

I do agree with you I packed to much abstract metaphors for such a small piece, the reason is I had alot of ideas about this and looking over it I would definitely want to increase the length of the post.

Lastly Malone I would like to make this more abstract, thanks a lot for your effort in looking at examples. I am really into this kind of writing and any other examples would help a lot, I know there is more of this writing out there but I have yet to find really good examples.

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That's just more ammo for my arsenal.

abbeyd21

I have to agree with Malone about it sounding as though he's comminting suicide over the girl. I think if you tried to explain another of te "worlds" that he experiances it would help take the focus off of her. There are a lot of metaphors and knowing now what you're going for I think lengthening the piece would be a really good way to keep a lot of that stuff in there without bogging it down too much. You are already aware of that though. To me the MC doesn't feel desperate enough to kill himself. I think Malone said the suicide was too pretty and I think he's right. I do believe that your cahracter has been pushed too far but it doesnt quite feel like he's given up just yet.

I do like thepiece though and think it will be really good after it's worked on a little.

Malone

Okay...I can kind of see the "duality/multi-reality" thing when reading it with that in mind, but you don't make it nearly clear enough. You use "her" so much that it seems to be constantly re-enforcing the idea of the girl.
Not knowing what is real is MUCH cooler, in my opinion. I think about stuff like that all the time. I think you just need to tighten this up, maybe go really crazy with it and have reality switches happening throughout, and focus much more on that aspect rather than the girl. I'm glad abbey got the same impression about the suicidal motive, so I can confidently say it's not just my interpretation.

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There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed