Kidnapped

First chapter of The Masked Man

"Please!Please, let me go!" I sobbed, clawing at the ground. My captor was pulling me by the hair down a deserted alleyway after knocking me out. He wore a white mask over his face, black paint spread over it to look like a noose. A dark black cloak was over his body and I clung to it, trying to rip it off him. He turned toward me, kicking me in the ribs and knocking the air out of my lungs.

"What did I do to you?!" I coughed. There where rumors of people disappearing mysteriously around the neighborhood but I never payed them attention. After all, they were rumors. My father was also a cop so I knew what to do whenever I go out, like always having my phone in my pocket, fully charged.

We came to the end of the alleyway, tears streaming down my face as I shakes with sobs. The masked man kicked me again, but I quickly sat up to avoid it. He grabbed me by the collar, pulling me up violently and pinning me to the wall. 

"Be quiet or I will make sure your dead, mauled corpse is hung up for everybody to see" He smells of smoke and dirt. 

I coughed, my hands going to his wrists to make him let me go. His response is shoving me against the wall. 

"Yes-fine-I'll...Stop" He releases me, grabbing the sleeves of my jacket and dragging me once again. I rubbed my sore throat with my spare hand, trying to remember where I left my phone. The masked man lifted me on top of a garbage can.

"Get over the wall" He motions toward the dead end. 

"T-the wall?" 

"Yes, now do it before your legs are taken away from you"

I'm tempted to just kick him in the face, but I knew he was serious about the whole "cutting my legs" thing. As soon as my body was over the wall, I fell to the ground. The knees of my jeans ripped and I scraped my leg, the skin peeling and leaving blood. 

"Holy-" The masked man jumps to the ground gracefully. He grabs my collar and once again hauls me to my feet. I wobble but keep my ground. The forest is right in front of us, deep green foliage leaving room for no light to enter. 

The masked man walks toward it, expecting me to follow. 

Hell no.

Looking around, I grab a sharp branch on the floor, running toward the masked man. Aiming the stick high, I quickly kick the back of his legs and stab him. He turned just as the stick was going to impale him, stabbing through his arm instead of his back.

He curses, grabbing my leg as I was turning to run. I fall to the ground, fumbling with the pocket of my jacket. 

If I could just get my phone-

The masked man pins me to the floor, pulling out a knife and holding it near my face.

"We wouldn't want to ruin that pretty face of yours, would we?" He grazes the tip of the knife across my cheek. 

"I-"

"What have I said about being quiet?" He puts pressure on the knife once it reaches my jaw, a thin line of blood dripping. 

I nod my head, looking to see how much damage I did to his arm. The stick didn't go to deep, but there was still blood drenching the sleeve of his cloak. He grabs my chin, forcing me to look into his masked face. He dragged his finger from my chin to my collarbone. Fear washes over me. 

"Get up" He says, getting off of me.

I scramble to my feet just as he knocked something at the back of my head.

Reviews

[Ern M. Yoshimoto]

i look forward to see what happens next.
going straight into the action was fine - but i do hope to get a bit of character development later on.
and maybe a bit more on the setting. it doesn't have to give the name of the city, but a little bit about what kind of place the action is taking place, if there's a lot of nature or if it's very urban, blah blah, would add more colour to the story

[♢Sophia♢]

Thank you so much for your feedback! I will do my best to improve!

[JayG]

I’m not going to make you happy, I’m afraid. But still, what I have to say is not a matter of talent or how well you write. It’s that like so many others, you’ve fallen into the most common trap for the hopeful writer: Transcribing yourself telling the reader a story. It’s something that works perfectly for the author but can’t work on the page. And because it is invisible to the author, they'll not address the problem they don’t see as being one—which is why I thought you might want to know.

Verbal storytelling is a performance art, where HOW you tell the story matters as much as the words you use. The storyteller’s performance replaces those of all the actors we have on film AND, on the page. So by giving the reader your storyteller's words, and nothing else, you’ve appointed someone who has not a clue of how to perform the story as narrator/storyteller; has had no rehearsal time to learn the story; and, who sees the punctuation AFTER the line has been read.

In short: Written that way, it cannot be made to work. To better understand why, look at a few lines as the reader must. You’ve not addressed the three issues that will provide context, so...

• "Please!Please, let me go!"

Situational possibilities, as-the-reader-sees-it:

1. A young boy wants to go to the circus, or some other place, but has been told no.
2. A woman, bent on suicide, is being kept from climbing over a railing to jump.
3. Someone is about to get a traffic ticket, or arrested for shoplifting.
4. Someone is not permitted to leave a specific place.
5. Someone is being physically restrained for unknown reasons, which may be seen as either bad or good by the reader, when they learn the why of it.

My point? You know why it’s being said, and who’s saying it. Those in the story know. But unless the reader knows, the words are meaningless as-they’re-read. And we cannot retroactively clarify.

But that aside, look at the situation:

1. You tell the reader that this ungendered person is being dragged AFTER being “knocked out.” So why are they not unconscious? It would make more sense to open with him/her to waking to the situation, and proceed from there. We don’t know when this takes place, but, in the past both genders had long hair, so gender is unknown. And, alleys in the present, are usually paved. So this seems to suggest a setting either in the past, or an undeveloped nation. The cellphones come as a surprise.
2. Try this: have someone with long hair lie on the floor. Then pull them for a few feet, at a wall;king pace, and you’ll learn why this person would be focused on their pain more than anything else. They sure as hell wouldn’t be calm enough to tell the reader what the person looks like.
3. They’re behind the one dragging them. And they woke to find themselves there. How can they tell what the front side of that person looks like? And who cares? Getting free matters a lot more to the protagonist than giving a general description.

• I sobbed, clawing at the ground.

I give up. Why are they doing that? Given that the reader has no idea of the age, gender, situation, and backstory, what can this mean?

When you read this story every word points to images, situations, action, and more, all stored and waiting in your mind. So, for you it works just as you intend. The reader? For them, every word points to images, situations, action, and more, all stored and waiting in *YOUR* mind, which helps not at all.

Here’s the deal: All your life you’ve chosen fiction that’s been written with the professional skills the pros take for granted. You can’t know where the author’s decision-points were, or, see the tools that are in use, because as always, art conceals art. But...you EXPECT to see the result of using them, and will turn away in a paragraph if they’re not in use. More to the point, your reader expects to see it in YOUR work, which is the best argument I know of for digging into those skills.

Like or or not, the skills we’re given in school are meant to ready us for writing the reports, letters, and other nonfiction applications that employers need. We forget that universities offer degree programs in commercial Fiction Writing. Who would take one of the skills they teach are optional?

Bottom Line: To write fiction we need the skills of fiction writing, even for hobby writing. No way around that, and the only shortcut I know of it to not waste time looking for shortcuts.

You’ve been working hard on this, so, you have the desire and the perseverance. You have the story, too. What’s missing is the same thing that catches most of us, a misconception that, in school, we learned a skill called writing, that works for all applications. So, we never search for more.

Fully 75% of what’s submitted to agents and publishers comes from people in that situation, and it’s rejected early on page one. Of the rest, all but 2 are seen as unprofessional. So, you have a LOT of company.

So, fix that and you jump to the front of the line.

To help, try this: Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer is the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. It’s an older book, but still, the best. So try a few chapters for fit.

https://dokumen.pub/techniques-of-the-selling-writer-0806111917.html

And for what it might be worth, my articles and YouTube videos are meant as an overview of the gotchas that catch most of us.

But whatever you do, hang in there and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

[Gabriel]

PLEASE LET HER DEVELOP STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

[♢Sophia♢]

Maybe I will, maybe I won't. You'll see. :)