Sedate the Animal in the Pen

"Animal Care" is one of the most boring jobs in the world.

Feeding animals? Sweeping poo? Can't say I disagree.

So why am I dashing down the Animal Care Facility like a madman?

Oh right! Because behind me galloped a man-eating stallion which wasn't too happy about me cleaning his pen without feeding him one of my limbs.

I glanced behind me as I forced my throbbing legs to run down the white washed halls of the facility. The steed, towering over me like a light post, ran swiftly toward me; its eyes red and its mouth glazed with drool.

This wasn't the first time I cleaned a man-eating horse's pen.

When you worked in a farm that cultured mythical animals for fun, it was routine. I just forgot to sedate Old Grumpy, which was a must before doing anything concerning his pen, because when I went to his bedroom, he was already curled up and snoring in a corner.

I took a left turn as I sprinted for my life, my white sneakers almost slipping uncontrollably against the newly mopped tiles.

I couldn't--shouldn't stop running; not when I could feel the horse's breath at the back of my neck.

And it stank like rotting eggs!

"Snap!

I yelped.

I could swear I heard the horse's teeth snap against my ear.

I took another turn to the right, flailing my arms and almost losing my bearings. I pushed my weight forward and convinced myself I could survive the chase. But as a reached my hand out for the exit door in front of me, I felt a painful tug at my hair and found myself flying off the ground, hitting a hard wall and crashing down the cold floor in a loud thud.

I yelled out in pain. It felt like I just got hit by a bus...not that I had hit one before...

Then I smelled the stench of sulfur, and I knew I had to force my aching body to move. I pushed my weight to the side, rolling over and narrowly avoiding a bite on my neck. I crawled for survival but it quickly proved to be futile as I felt a forceful yank at the edge of my pants.

I found myself being thrashed against another wall.

Curse the Institute for the Preservation and Regeneration of Rare and Extinct Species's reinforced Kevlar uniforms! 

I stretched my vocal chords as far as it could go as the impact shocked my bones. Sadly, I realized no one would be around to hear my girly squeal for survival because I was the only one who volunteered to work my shift on a holiday.

I crashed face-first on the tiles I disinfected not so long ago. I shut my eyes as flames engulfed my nose; which was weird because it was suddenly wet too.

I would really demand a hefty severance pay and damages after this. How much did a nose surgery cost again?

I felt another yank on my shirt collar, and I gathered every inch of strength I still had to turn around and grab the stallion's massive face. I roared, like a barbarian charging into the battle field, and pushed the horses' slobbery muzzle away from me.

I wanted to poke its shiny ruby eyes for vengeance -- two eyes for a nose. But the eye of the only existing Stallion of Thrace cost billions.

My severance pay and damages wouldn't be enough to pay for it so I opted to leave the eyes alone.

Just as my trembling hands began to slip over his annoyingly smooth dark blue hair"

I know, right? Blue horse..? My boss was crazy.

"I grabbed his nose and pushed his face away. Imagine someone pushing that flap surrounding your nostrils upward.

Yes,that was how hilarious he was when I pushed his nose flaps upward.

He thrashed against my hands but I kept pushing his nose. It seemed to dissuade him from snapping at my face, and it lathered my hands with sticky green goo.

For a second there, I wondered if my boss harvested the steed's nasal fluid and sold it as...

I saw the horse's front leg suddenly hovering dangerously over me. I knew he was going to stomp in irritation but I didn't realize that he would stomp on me.

I cried out, just as I heard a loud cracking sound close to my ear.

"One more injury to include in my lawsuit.

I flailed my legs.

If he was using his legs, I was going to use mine too.

I kicked at nowhere in particular. His massive face blocked my view, but I sincerely hoped I hit something solid soon. Man-eating horses, though man-eating, were horses. Just like any horse, their weakest part was the leg.

So I blindly aimed for the leg.

But to my surprise, I hit something...softer.

Go figure.

He did not like it, of course. He kicked his hind legs back, cracking the nearby concrete wall.

"Hopefully my boss wouldn't charge that against me in their counter lawsuit.

Then he lifted his front legs, roaring like Tarzan declaring war.

I had seen death sequences in shows and movies all the time, and it always seemed to happen in slow motion.

Not this one -- not mine.

Two hooves hovered over me. Then"

***

A blinding white ceiling -- that was what I woke up to.

The annoying stench of strong disinfectants irked my nose and I frowned. I cursed as pain shot through the core of my face. To my surprise, I felt some sort of tape stuck on my skin too.

I moved my gaze elsewhere, hoping to catch a hint of where I was... or why I was there. It was then that I realized that I was also stuck on a bed. I wasn't fastened to the cushion but I couldn't really move my body.

So what should you do when you can't move your body? Panic, of course!

And that was what I did. I looked frantically everywhere; every corner of the white room until I saw the swaying white curtains, the irritating beeping machine, the bag of liquid hanging slightly overhead, the---

"Dude! Calm down!"

Ah! Something familiar! I looked up to see a goofy grin on my brother's freckled face.

I was paralyzed on a bed, with tape on my face, and probably all over my body.

And he was laughing?

I glared at him. It took a moment for him to understand it but he gained the decency to act sorry for me.

"Where..?" I managed to say, my voice almost cracking at the edges.

And did I just slur? Was I wasted? Was that why I couldn't move?

"Hospital," my brother answered. "You've been sleeping here for two days."

Whoa! So I woke up from a coma?

"What..?" I asked, hoping to send the rest of my question into my brother's noggin by staring intently at him.

"You got hit by a bus," my kind little brother said, chuckling at the idea. "I mean seriously! How do you get hit by a bus?"

I scowled, which caused my face to sting.

How should I know? I didn't know I got hit by a bus until he told me so.

"How..?" I asked, hoping my telepathic powers worked once more.

"How do you look? You look like a mummy!" he replied, bursting into laughter.

I rolled my eyes as he tried to mimic a mummy rising from the grave. Of course, my imaginary telepathic ability would fail me.

He trudged around my bed in his imitation of a mummy gaining its senses after centuries of death, and I felt an itch to tell him he was looking more like a zombie than a mummy.

My mouth barely let me speak, however, so I opted to make the most of what I could do and clear up my question.

"How"get"here?"

"Oh! Was that what you wanted to know? Why didn't you just say so?"

"'Coz I couldn't!

"The driver of the bus rushed you here," he answered. "I just got a call that you were in the Emergency Room. I didn't know you put me as the first person to contact if something bad happened to you. That really made me like you more."

He grinned widely like me like a child who just received a toy for Christmas.

I rolled my eyes. The only reason I put him in my "in case of emergency" information was because our mom had a weak heart, and she was easily stirred into a panic.

But if whoever hit me found my brother in an "in case of emergency" tag, that meant he saw my work ID. And my work ID...

"Wait! Where did I work again?

"Where..?" I mumbled.

"I told you. You're in the hospital."

"No! Where...bus...hit..?"

"Where the bus hit you?" My brother scrunched up his nose. "Judging by your injuries, you got hit by the bus on the face." He burst into laughter again.

I grunted two times to stop him.

"Oh wait! Did you mean where you had the accident? In which street and stuff?"

I grunted once.

We should really develop some kind of system here: one grunt for 'yes' and two grunts for 'no.'

"I don't know," my brother answered, shrugging his shoulders as if the site of my accident didn't matter. "They just said you crossed the street without looking out for running vehicles. I mean, dude! That's elementary! Anyway, you got hit by the bus. They got you here and paid for your hospital needs. And they left you this," he said, fishing out a white envelope and handing it to me.

I glared at him. I could barely move my fingers!

He smiled sheepishly, finally realizing my predicament.

"I'll read it for you," he said, opening the envelope. He cleared his throat and began to read. "Dear Mr. Weylan Matthew. We are deeply sorry for the accident. Attached is something to help you in your inconvenience."

My brother smiled widely, flashing a check with $100,000..?

"What?!" I exclaimed, almost sitting up from my bed if my body didn't protest in the most painful manner.

"I know, right?" my brother excitedly said. "Oh and there's a PS on the letter " 'Thanks for sparing the eyes.'"

Author's Note

Newbie here. Do tell me what you think about this one.
Reviews and ratings are much appreciated. :)

Reviews

[FoxgloveLove]

This is a fun little piece, I got a good laugh out of it. Even for a simple short story, it works well as a stand-alone piece, and you tie everything together quite nicely in your conclusion. Overall, it's quite well-rounded, using elements of action, comedy, and mystery, and it's complete in itself. Nice work.

There are a few grammatical errors, but nothing major. Just ensure you have someone proofread through it to try to catch some of the more common mistakes that you might miss when you check it over yourself. Instead, I'll focus a little more on your structure and style, and I'll just point out a few things I was thinking while I read through this piece.


---Structure---

While it may seem easier to write and read really short paragraphs as opposed to long, blocks of text, keep in mind that if you make your paragraphs too short it may come off as being a little fragmented and difficult to tie ideas and sequences together. Paragraphs are an excellent tool for you to use in order to focus attention on certain topics. Using a short paragraph here and there if you want to provide a sharper focus on a single action or thought is fine, but if all of your paragraphs are that short, you lose the ability to do that in your writing, since there is no contrast between the paragraphs that you want to be short versus the paragraphs that you don't care if they're shorter or longer.


---Style---

There are a few things I'd like to mention about your writing and story-telling style. The most notably obvious thing I saw in your writing is that you like to use italics frequently. While italics can help to emphasize certain words and phrases that you want to draw attention to, I feel like you overuse them a little too much, to the point that they start to lose their strength in emphasis. Even outside of just using italics, if you overuse something in your writing, its usefulness will begin to fade over time. In short, keep in mind how frequently you're using things like italics as you write; the more conservative you are with your usage, the more impact it will have when you actually do use it.

The second thing I noticed in your writing style is that you tend to write using a rather casual, common-speech style, which is to say that you write how you might talk in a normal conversation with one of your friends. This in a lot of ways can be a very engaging way to write stories, and you employ it very well. However, with everything it's good to keep in mind a good balance in how much of your colloquial speech (e.g. turns of phrase, slang, common sayings) you include in your story, particularly in your narration. Colloquial speech is excellent for dialogue, but just remember that, when you write, not everyone is going to read your story as one of your close friends with whom you talk regularly might read it. You might find it natural to say something like "For a second there..." or "Was I wasted?" as you would in your normal speaking, but using these phrases a little too much starts to disrupt the narration, especially if you're trying to use a more formal style of writing in the rest of your narration. Consider rephrasing these sayings, or even consider separating action and descriptive narration from your main character's inner thoughts.

On a somewhat related note, when you're introducing something unique or uncommon outside of the world in your story, consider trying to keep the actual introduction separate from further descriptions. By this, I'm mostly referring to the following sentence you wrote:
"Curse the Institute for the Preservation and Regeneration of Rare and Extinct Species's reinforced Kevlar uniforms!"
The Institute for the Preservation and Regeneration of Rare and Extinct Species is not only unique to your story, but it's also very complicated. However, you have this incredibly long name (which the reader is not familiar with) in the middle of a descriptive sentence, which makes it very hard to follow the rest of the sentence (I honestly forgot what the entire sentence was about by the time I finished reading the name, and I had to go back and reread it so that I could understand). To fix this, you could simply just separate these parts and insert them at an appropriate point in your story, for example: "Such is life at the Institute for the Preservation and Regeneration of Rare and Extinct Species," and later you could simply shorten your original sentence to, ""Curse the Institute's reinforced Kevlar uniforms!" (which is a much more easily readable sentence).

The last thing I'll cover simply has to do with something that caught my attention in your opening sentence: recognizing the difference between fact and opinion (i.e. what is, and what seems to be). You open your story with the sentence:
' "Animal Care" is one of the most boring jobs in the world.'
I may not be an animal care specialist, but I can probably tell you just by reading that sentence that there are a lot of people who would disagree with you in that regard. This is a sentence of opinion, but you've phrased it like a fact. I would strongly urge you to avoid this in your writing, because this can be a major turn-off for a lot of readers.

While I understand that you're saying this in the perspective of the main character, it's still not the most appropriate way to present this opinion, especially since, being the first line of your story, the reader doesn't know that it is a character's opinion, yet. Even more so, you contradict yourself almost immediately by presenting a scene in which animal care is certainly not the most boring job in the world. Doing this in dialogue can be acceptable in some cases, but as narration I think it's much better to ensure that you phrase opinions to sound like opinions. Alternatives could include things like:
""Animal Care" seems like it would be one of the most boring jobs in the world."
"I'm sure a lot of people would imagine that "Animal Care Specialist" would be one of the most boring jobs in the world."


Overall, this was just a really fun story to read. It's easy to get into, it's a quick read, you use a lot of nice, descriptive imagery to paint a good picture of what's happening (although you might consider spending a little more time on describing the scenery and characters rather than just the action and dialogue), and it has some good humor.

- Rating -
Grammar: 17/20
Structure: 15/20
Style: 14/20
Language: 15/20
Appeal: 18/20
----------------------
Overall: 79/100

Good work! Just keep practicing your writing, and maybe try branching out with some different styles of writing you're not used to next time. Hopefully you found this review somewhat useful ^^

-FoxgloveLove

[Kuro]

A fine example of writing.

[Calleline]

Thank you so much! This review means a lot to me.

[Yarimar]

I rarely know how to review other's work, so I will do my best. I liked the story because you use a simple yet descriptive language, you don't over do it though, the words you choose to emphazise a sound, an action are just right (snap, yelp...), the light humor, you use just enough of it to liven the situation but it does not serve as a distraction, which in my experience is just perfect. The story is captivating and engaging, it makes me want to know more, where did Matt come from? Who is he? How come his brother has no clue what he does? How old is he? etc. This feels like the continuation of the begining of a bigger story (novel?), past the introduction, before discovering all that leads to the climax.
The progression of events feels natural, you don't give away too much, just enough to keep the reader on point all while desirng more. I am one that would love to see where this goes.
Hope this helps and keep t up.

[Calleline]

Thank you! Like I said, I'm not used to writing short stories and that's because I find myself writing lengthy novel-like pieces more often. I guess that somehow reflected in the piece because it made you feel like it's the start of a much bigger story. I'm really glad you liked the story.