/lit/ - Literature

Would anyone be interested in critiquing a short story inspired by Blackwood & Jackson? Admittedly it'd 6.5k words. We could do a swap.

>>18108644
I already said the Egret story isn't what I usually write. Here's a few sentences from one story that is going to be published and another that received some pretty good comments and wasn't just a form rejection. Most of my stuff is all character and no action.

He wore white shirts, white trousers, white everything. He made me do the same. The sound of the vacuum cleaner was a near constant in the house, as was the clatter of dishes—dishes which had been cleaned three, four times already. It was the sound of cutlery to which I awoke, and which remained as I put on my spotless clothes. I forced myself to avoid looking at the forest again and, with a sigh, opened the door. As I put my feet to the creamy carpeted landing, I moved methodically, regretting with every step the impressions I made. Downstairs in the kitchen I greeted my father with a solemn, half-audible sound. If the upstairs was loathsome, the kitchen I hated most of all. Walking into that space was like entering another world. I could scarcely look at any of the appliances or furniture tops without wanting to tear out my eyes. In this antiseptic domain, over which my father had absolute sovereignty, the smell of bleach and the sheen of cold metal was all-pervasive.

My father nodded to me over his breakfast of butterless toast. I took a seat and watched him cut up the toast into the smallest possible squares. When this was achieved, he lifted the morsel daintily to his mouth, hesitating a long while before swallowing it in one clean gulp.

---

An ache throbbed in Ort’s brain, a line of sweat tickled his cheek. His eye twitched as images flashed in series, of interrupted peace, of measured breathing exercises. The ones recommended by his therapist before the change of name and change of place. He tried those techniques now. He must’ve forgotten how to do it because it didn’t work. There was that laugh again. The inane drum and clap. His strained gaze fell on someone who looked a lot like Mr. Addison, a man he’d never forgotten, a man from before, with the same ridiculously smug and carefree grin.
[skip]
It started off harmless enough. He upended a table, knocked a few bottles. Everyone froze stiff, even the kids bouncing on the bouncy castle. Murmurs quickly developed into frightened accusations of a ghostly overtaking. Well, he’d make the acts of a poltergeist look like cheap tricks; he’d turn their pampered, untroubled lives upside down, bring the dark magic twists of Othertown upon them. He clambered over fallen chairs to reach a pearl-earringed woman, whispered what the worms said when they lowered the coffins. Into another ear he breathed a line from a certain ebony book and the listener fell away in a faint. Then he grabbed the baseball bat which they’d used for the piñata and beat Addison’s shins with it.