Scratch

Cool story! 

bump

wasabi56 wrote:

O.o that is kind of creepy, was the cheetah thing a mutated human?

I think so. I can't actually remember, since it was almost a year ago when I wrote this. 

Do you mind if i nitpick? too late
i may be a little uh sarcastic or snide or critical but honestly i don't think i'm better then you at all.
It's just idk
I feel like it

My edits will be in brackets

calebxy wrote:

This is a short story I wrote for English class a while ago. I never finished it though.    I just thought I'd post it here to see what you all think of it. 


Damien sat at the wheel of his car, racing through the empty country road. The time was approaching midnight, and the roads were now deserted.(We've already established that the road is empty) He was driving as fast as he could back to his house. He’d been camping in the forest for two nights, and had finally found what he was looking for. Aliens. (I'm not saying it's aliens, but.. it's aliens) At least, as close as he could get to proving their existence without actually capturing one of them. (logical- good sentence) Earlier that very night, a UFO had flown overhead, barely (maybe 'only'?) a few hundred feet in the sky, and crashed into the ground a mile or two from his camp.

Damien travelled to the wreckage on foot, not able to get to it by car. There was an enormous ship embedded into the ground, completely covered in flames. The raging fire was so intense that he couldn’t get closer than 50 feet to it. (this makes sense!) After it started burning down the trees all around it, he decided it was time to leave. (well no duh. I mean- can you imagine if he didn't? anyway maybe this sentence could be reworked. I know that when i'm in a huge fire that encompasses 50+ feet i don't just 'decide' to leave. I freak the heck out.)But he had it all on camera. All of it. (That's been established.. but it can be nice to repeat things for emphasis. EMPHASIS) Right from when the ship flew past all the way to when Damien got back to his camp from (after?)investigating the wreckage. He couldn’t wait to get home and put it on his website. He was sure to get thousands more views overnight! (what a cocky UFO investigator!    )

Once he finally made it into a clearing, an incredible bright light shone into his eyes, blinding him! The light was coming from some sort of enormous object in the middle of the road. Damien didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t see where he was going, so he just braked.(Stopped?) But it wasn’t enough. The car skidded into the object, and went up a ramp going into it. (how convinient.) Damien blacked out.


Some time later, he woke up. He didn’t know how long it had been, nor where he was. Not realising that he was blind, Damien presumed that he was just in a very dark room.(Blind people don't see black- they see what you see out of your elbow. But to be honest i've read it's more like a milkyish grey) He felt the space around him to try and figure out where he was. He could feel the cold, hard floor, probably made out of metal. That was odd. What sort of a room has a metal floor? Immediately jumping to conclusions, the alien hunter guessed that he was probably contained in a space ship prison cell. He didn’t actually remember the events of last night. The UFO crash, the blinding light in the middle of the road. He just naturally presumed (I'm not saying it's aliens, but it's..) aliens,  whenever something didn’t seem right.

“Where am I!?” he shouted.

There was no answer. After a few seconds, he tried again.

“Tell me where I am!” he demanded.

After waiting again for a few seconds, he began feeling his way around the room, crawling on his hands and knees. Suddenly, there was the sound of a door opening. Damien looked around, trying to see the slither of light coming through the now open door, but he couldn’t. He still didn’t realise that he was blind.

“Who are you!?” he shouted in the direction of the noise.
“Don’t worry,” said a voice in front of him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Yeah right! I bet you’ve already done that, haven’t you?! Opened me up, dissected me! Experimented on me with your alien tech!” (He seems understandably whiny here, but I wouldn't use the word 'tech'.    )
“Really, we mean you no harm. And I’m not an alien. Can’t you see?”

Damien started to get worried. Should he be able to see? If so, then why couldn’t he?

“No,” he replied, in a sudden change of emotion. (wow, that was uh, strange. Abnormal for a human to change emotion without reason. Perchance elaborate one why?) “Just tell me where I am!” (again, another emotion change.    )
“You’re quite safe. I can’t tell you exactly where you are, but you’re in safe hands. (repeating words isn't always a good thing.  )
We not aliens; don’t worry about that.”
“Then who are you?” Damien asked. “The government?”
“Yes, a division of the government.”
“Then what do you want with me?!”
“I’m afraid you came into contact with aliens last night.”

Damien’s eyes widened.

“What?” he said in disbelief.
“A UFO crashed into the forest where you were camping. You investigated, but got too close. We feared that you may have been infected.”(I likey)

Damien couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He didn’t remember it at all. Not even the faintest memory of it. (maybe 'not in the slightest' or something along those lines?)

“Was I?” he asked, almost subconsciously, focusing on trying to remember last night.
“Yes, you were. Fortunately we were able to... intercept you, on your way home. Once we had got hold of you, we discovered that there was mutation growing inside you.”
“Sorry, what did you say?!” Damien asked in shock, fazing back into reality after hearing those words.
“But don’t worry! (you just had mutation inside you for a brief time!) We were able to extract all traces of the mutation, and we currently have the infected tissue quarantined in a containment facility on the other side of the building.” (Good)
“So you did dissect me!?” (Multiple punctiation isn't always great!!1)
“We helped you.”

Suddenly, Damien’s sight started to come back. He could see a faint glimmer of light from what he presumed was the ceiling, but that was pretty much it. ('pretty much' is pretty informal) Suddenly, there was a tremendous noise from outside! ('suddenly' makes things happen too fast. remember- show, don't tell) The sound of rocket engines, seemingly hovering in roughly the same place outside. Something sounding remarkably similar to thunder, though sharper than that. Combined with that was the sound of explosions, seemingly coming from all around the room he was in.

More confused than ever, Damien began seeing things everywhere. The light from the ceiling had disappeared from his vision, but he could now see the bulb itself. After a few seconds, he could see everything in the room. At least, he presumed he could. But for some reason, nothing had any texture, and everything was in black and white. He could make out objects, but they were all colourless with no texture. Every time there was a loud noise, his vision briefly became quite distorted in the direction of it. Every time there was any noise at all, he could see it. Almost like he could see the vibrations in the air. (Ohh lala. I think i read about this in somewhere or other.. quite interesting. OH YEAH, MAYBE DAREDEVIL.    [not meant to be mean in those capital letters there- just when i remember something online i put it in CAPITAL LETTERS])

Something came bursting into the room!(Show, don't tell!) By this time, the person who was in there with Damien had gone to help defend against the attack, leaving Damien alone.(Awfully informal) But he wasn’t alone any longer.(Really sudden!) Now there was a creature in the room as well.(Show, don't tell!) It had incredibly smooth skin; not that Damien would have noticed otherwise. The creature also didn’t appear to have any eyes, or a mouth. Damien wasn’t really missing anything.

It slowly leaned forward a few inches, quickly examining its surroundings, before it leapt at Damien, its clawed arms outstretched. By this time, he had backed into a corner, terrified. Somehow instinctively, though, he used one leg to bound off the wall to his side and dived to the ground, dodging the creature. The creature snapped round in surprise, watching its prey. Damien didn’t stop to kindly explain. He sprinted out the open door. The creature followed him, leaping across the floor like a cheetah, and almost as fast as one.

The corridor was in total chaos. Huge chunks of the wall were missing, with fire everywhere. Damien looked behind him, still running and saw the creature shoot out of the room he was just in. He ran as fast as he could, but so did the thing chasing him. Somehow, he managed to stay ahead of it for quite a few seconds. It was still catching, but not as fast as either of them imagined. Damien was running impossibly fast; much much faster than any human should be able to. Before the creature caught up with him, as it inevitably would, he dived through one of the many gaps in the corridor, and landed on the grass outside. He turned around to look at the corridor and saw the thing follow him out. It again dived at him, but this time Damien leapt high into the air, and front flipped over it.

After he landed, he noticed the enormous ship hovering several meters above his head. He just so happened to be directly below the ramp on the underneath of the ship, though it was now closed. He could see two handles on it, where it was presumably pulled down from if necessary. Before the creature could attack again, Damien jumped up as high as he could, and managed to grab onto one of the handles. There were a few buttons to the side of the ramp, and he pressed the one that looked most likely to open it. He guessed correctly, and with a quick hissing sound, the ramp rapidly lowered and jerked suddenly when it stopped.

Below Damien’s dangling feet, the creature sprung up into the air. But Damien was too fast for it. He swung himself on top of the ramp, shielding himself from it. He saw the creature’s claws clinging onto the edge of the ramp, trying to get up. Not waiting to see if it could, he turned around and ran inside the craft.

Inside, Damien could make out several figures, fortunately of the very human type. One of them turned to him.

“You!” the man exclaimed, pointing at him.

Damien instinctively put his hands up, even though the man wasn’t actually holding a weapon.

“How did you get up here?!” the man demanded, more scared than anything.
“I jumped,” he replied, only just realising how ridiculously that was.
“You’re the person who got dissected, aren’t you?” the man asked, beginning to work out what happened.
“Apparently. Anyway, tell me what’s happening!”
“The alien virus you got infected with managed to infect several other people, after we took it out of you. Though obviously we didn’t do a very good job of that. It mutates people and turns them into... some sort of creature.”
“So you mean I can do all this stuff because I’m being mutated into an alien?!”
“I’m afraid so,” the man answered. “But the difference is, your brain doesn’t seem to be infected, whereas all the others have. They’ve gone completely insane, attacking everyone! And they’ve taken over this ship, and they’re using it to completely destroy the building!”

Damien couldn’t believe what was happening. Being mutated into an alien wasn’t one of the things he expected to happen today.

“So why hasn’t it effected my brain?” he asked, extremely confused.
“I’m not entirely sure. Maybe, since we obviously did take out some of your mutated tissue, we took out the part that would affect the brain.”
“Look out!” one of the other men in the room shouted.

He had a fire extinguisher in his hand, and rushed past Damien towards the ramp. The creature had finally managed to get up, before it was blasted with a jet of water. It cried out in pain, and jerked backwards, tumbling off the edge of the ramp.

Damien looked back at the man he was talking to, confused.

“Water harms them,” the man explained.
“Wow,” he replied, surprised. “Excellent.”
“We’ve only managed to do it to one person so far,” the man continued, “but it seems that water completely destroys all traces of the infection.”
“Really?!” Damien exclaimed.
“Yes,” the man replied, smiling.

Not that Damien could see him smiling, but the man was genuinely pleased, both for Damien’s sake, and everyone who had got infected.

I'm sorry I stopped halfway through but i got bored of nitpicking!
from what i read your writing seems to lack emotion. Have you read 'War of the Worlds'?
H.G Wells conveys fear really well I think. It's really intimate and close to your heart- you feel the fear you would if aliens were splodin crud up.
Your writing doesn't have this- Damien doesn't FEEL surprised. He just IS.
This is a really hard skill to master so I can't give you any advice. Even the 'best' sometimes can't do it. Take Harry Potter for example. A powerful serial killer who commands a leigion of other murderers is after you in particular. JK Rowling seemed to convey this with relatively little fear. She seemed to replace it with other emotions- sadness at Cedrics death. Anger with Voldemort.

So uh in conclusion
I didn't read all of it!