Chapter 1

Nightmares, they haunt my nights, every night. I’m running, running away from my fear. This fear is death, a changing black shroud engulfing my hopes of living. When I sleep, the fear overcomes me to where I cannot hold in my screams of terror.

            In this nightmare, the fear is loosing my family, my sweet, caring, loving family. I see my mother, father, and brother all tied up and on their knees, they all reek of fear and sweat. One by one, a mysterious figure sucks their life away, to only leave a rotting corpse at my feet. I try to scream at the sight, but my voice died. I can only watch as they all die. Once they were all dead, my head started to pound. It was so painful,

            *pound, pound, pound…pound, pound, pound.*                 

            It was that damn alarm clock.

            I awakened from my deep sleep, I was covered in sweat.

            I got out of my bed to get dressed; I had to get to my job. God, I hated my job. I was treated like s**t by rich jerks who thought they ruled the world. Many of my co-workers, me included, wished they were buried six feet under.

            My day usually starts with these two gossip girls in my department telling me about people and what they think about them. They were the type of people who hated work. They gossiped and bitched all day long, they didn’t lift a finger to help unless it was an attractive guy that needed help. These two women (I use the term “woman” lightly) would attempt to flirt with customers, it usually failed.

            Today was no different, as I walked toward our break room to eat breakfast I could hear them talking about the Casey Anthony case that had been on the news for the longest time,

            “She was a partying girl, she had no values. I could have taken better care of her little girl any day of the week.” said my assistant Claire.

            “Oh whatever, you’re just as crazy as that Anthony woman.” said my second assistant.

            “Shut it Carry.”

            As I walked in I became annoyed by the conversation already. I decided to shut them both up,

            “The little girl is dead; the mother should be publicly hanged with the entire world watching.”

            I guess the two women didn’t see me walk in because once I was done talking they got really quiet. It got very tense in the room, so had to break the ice somehow,

            “Is something wrong ladies?”

            Claire spoke first,

            “Well Tom, we’ve had some visitors. They don’t want anything fixed; they want to speak to you.”

            “If it’s about the monthly bill tell them I paid it.”

            “No, I think it’s some kind of police agency; they have been questioning people, including us, all day. When we told them you were our boss they said they want to speak to you right away. They want you to go down to their department.”

            Next thing I know Claire is handing me directions to the department building.

            “You’re in trouble Tom”, said Carry with a smile.

            “I’ll let you know what is going on. In the mean time, I want you both to get my papers done and faxed over to Mrs. Laumer.

            I left the room wondering what was going to happen down at the department building. A police agency, what would they want with me?

            As I got into my car my phone rang. I looked at the number, it didn’t look familiar, and so I answered it,

            “Hello, Tom Francis speaking, may I ask who’s calling please?”

            It was silent; I thought it was a prank by some dumb kid, but then a voice answered on the receiver; it was a low gravely voice,

            “Mr. Francis, my name is detective Davis. We have some unfortunate news. We were called by neighbors of your parents last night. There was a break in. We have the area blocked off by squad cars on patrol. We would like for you to come soon as possible to their house.”

            Detective Davis hung up the phone before I could speak.

            My whole body felt numb. Were my parents alright?

* * *

            Pulling into the driveway was hard, I saw so many police cars; more than I’d ever seen at once, it scared me.

            As I got out of my car and walked towards the house, a man in a suit and tie stopped me,

            “Mr. Francis, my name is detective Davis, we spoke on the phone.”

            “Are you the same agency that came to my work earlier?”

            He looked surprised,

“Yes Mr. Francis, we also attempted to reach you at your home. At the last minute we were able to locate your cell phone number.”

            He paused for a little bit before he spoke again,

            We got a call around eleven o’ clock last night, a woman named Marcella clamed that she heard things being broken and pushed down, like book shelves and such. We have reason to believe that who ever did this is still in the area.”

            “I want to see if my parents are alright.”

            “I wouldn’t advise that Mr. Francis, it’s better if you stay out here while we do our job.”

            I considered staying where I was…until I saw a corners van.

            I rushed towards my parent’s house as fast as I could.

            As I ran towards the front door several officers attempted to stop me, but I avoided them all. Before I knew it I was holding the door knob; I gripped it tightly as the palm of my hands became sweaty. 

            When I turned the knob, I could hear the mechanics that made the door knob operate. As I slowly opened the door pain began to shoot up my left arm. I knew it was bad but I ignored it, I had to find out what was behind the door.

                       

 

 

           

Author's Note

I'm trying to improve on my grammar and overall structure of my work. Any tips or advice would be great!

Reviews

[TLK]

The first line uses the word 'night' three times -- I think this is too much. It is also a little bit of a cliché to open a horror story with nightmares.

Second paragraph: "loosing".
"One by one, a mysterious figure sucks their life away, to only leave a rotting corpse at my feet." -- this sentence contains such a perfunctory description of the nightmare that it isn't all that scary. Is there anything that you want the reader to SEE?

The onomatopoeia of *pound* comes across as somewhat juvenile to me. I am not sure that King has ever used sound in such a way (haven't read him for a few years, though).

"My whole body felt numb. Were my parents alright?" Don't push the obvious on the reader, it starts to look like a parody. And it is often annoying to ask rhetorical questions. Trust in your writing to make your readers feel for the character.

Rather confusing typo in "until I saw a corners van".

[JP Schay]

Thanks, I'll be sure to review these mistakes.