Stephen

meet stephen.

 

Stephen ran his hand along the curved edge of the knife.  Flakes of dried blood fell from the blade as his fingers felt their way from base to tip. 

 -A wonderful instrument- Stephen thought " don’t know why doctors don’t use them anymore, just one swing and thwack! Off with the arm-

  He inspected it thoroughly, it a medium sized instrument with a blade slightly straighter than crescent moon shape.   The outer edge was sharpened to perfection all the way down to the heavy wooden handle.

            Smiling to himself, Stephen ran the blade side between his thumb and index finger, just lightly enough to avoid being cut.  His euphoria was interrupted by a tentative voice behind him.

            “Stephen?” a female voice chimed from around the corner.  Stephen spun around quickly to see who had invaded his solitude, in the process jerking the knife that was between his fingers out from between his fingers.  Unfortunately his reaction was to tighten his grip on the knife, slicing a shallow gash into his thumb and index finger.

            “Goddammit, Marley” Stephen said pressing the end of his coat onto his bleeding fingers, “this had better be important.”

            “Oh, it is,” she assured then added in a grave tone, “Its about Reiker.”

Stephen looked up from tending to his injured hand, brow furrowed.

            “What about him?” he asked skeptically.

“A number of things,” she replied, “the first and foremost being that he’s dead.”

            “Dead?” Stephen said, taken aback, “how?”

“He was shot,” Marley replied, “several times.  No doubt who did it either.”

            “Yes, that’s obvious, Kingston isn’t very discreet with his grudges,” Stephen replied.  He sighed and pushed his dirty blond hair out of his face, “I guess this can be worked around, how long has it been?”

            “Well, you see…” Marley replied looking at the ground, “that’s the problem, the funerals already happened.  He’s buried and his personal items dispersed.”

            Stephen sighed again, this time he stood up and turned towards his work table.  An array of medical devices of all shape, size and era were spread about the worn, blood-stained, mahogany table.  He reached down and picked up a long spindle of a tool, its antiquity made it appear fragile, but it felt solid and sharp in Stephen’s hand. He twirled it around in his fingers absent mindedly as he thought.

            Marley stood in the doorway nervously wringing the end of her shirt.  She could tell Stephen was nervous about this latest development, it put a serious wrench in his situation. She watched with apprehension as he fiddled with his tools, picking one up turning it around in his hands a few times before replacing it with something more bizarre and dangerous looking.  A sickening feeling that he might turn around and attack her with one of the tools came over her; he just stood there his back to her playing with knives. He hadn’t hurt her before but with his past in mind it was hard to convince herself that he wouldn’t hurt her now. So she remained still, hands still clutching desperately at the end of her shirt, waiting for him to move.

            At long last his shoulders drooped as if he had given up in an argument, he put down the strange devices and slumped into a nearby chair.

            “So,” he said curtly, “I guess we’d better do something about this.”

“Of course,” Marley replied, “right away.”

            With that she turned and walked briskly up the stairs and out of the room, as soon as she was out clear of the doorway she relaxed, relief came over her like a wave.  She closed her eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath and heading out of the house; there were important things to be attended to.

 

 

Author's Note

Edit of original. I like this better.

Reviews

[.Bunnie.]

^.^ All right.........PREPARE FOR SHREDDING!!

:P No, just kidding. Actually, I think it's great! You do a wonderful job expressing the characters' personalities, the conflict is presented, the format is good for the most part. I'd just suggest editing the spacing you have between the dialogue for the characters; that's what I noticed most. Remember to always keep actions of one character in their own paragraph--don't mix. For example, don't have the female say something and then directly following that in the same paragraph still have the male's reaction. Just an example!! It'll be easy to fix through edits. :)

Also, this sentence kinda didn't....flow well? I don't know why, but here:
"She had been around long enough to know that when Stephen went straight to his workbench without a word after bad news was often, bad news."
I'd change it to something like this:
"She had been around long enough to know that it was a bad sign when Stephen went straight to his workbench without a word after hearing bad news."
(That was surprisingly tricky to word good lol....I feel for you!) :P

But really other than that, fantastic job! I look forward to reading more!

[M.]

@.Bunnie.: thanks for the feed back, it was really helpful :) I do have a tendancy to complicate sentances, the suggestion will most likely be added. thanks again :)