Edited Excerpt

Excerpt edited by xX-tito24-Xx

A single sliver of light sliced through the darkness. With every plunge and flash of silver, new coats of blood painted the blade, as a gurgling sound shattered the eerie silence. As the wielder finished the gruesome task, a soft whimper could be heard in the unholy background, a cry sharing similarities to that of a wounded animal. The murderer wiped his blade clean, giving a sardonic smile at the corpse that lay before him.

           

The body sat against the wall, a long gash running across his throat from ear to ear, a wicked smile worthy of any B-Movie horror flick. Large amounts of thick, red blood, the victims very life, pouring out onto his chest and the once clean carpet.

           

The pale white hand reached out above him, one single incandescent bulb illuminating the room and driving out the suffocating darkness that had enveloped them.  As the rays filled the bleak box of a room, everything became visible.

The victim’s face was young, his green eyes unsettling and unmistakingly dead, the spark of life having gone out after the third plunge of the blade had punctured his heart, his long black hair pushed back to reveal the well-structured face of what was once a man, and now nothing more than a corpse, possibly in his late twenties.

           

 

While the killer busied himself with polishing his ‘miraculous’ knife, the light whimper grew with every second that wasted, until it became a strong sighing heave and finally a breathless, asthmatic sob.

           

The victim’s girlfriend was huddled up in a corner, traumatized because of what she had just been forced to see. Her mind broken and in pieces, her eyes appeared lost in a completely different world that one can never hope to escape from.

            She rocked herself backwards and forwards, the unavoidable cliché that all who find themselves ripped from the world sanity fall into, the elemental need to feel safe and rocked as we had as babies; she whispered things to herself, incoherent things that only she could make sense of, some that even she couldn’t, a single slimy tendril of drool dripped out of her open mouth.

 

            Her long, brown hair was sleek and untangled, showing no signs of any manhandling. Bloodshot eyes that showed signs of her having used the newest blend of LSD to hit the streets, examined her long, manicured index finger, as it entered her quivering mouth, violently poking her uvula. Her “bad habit”, once thought of as beaten and gone, was her only comfort right now. As the killer, who considered himself the ultimate modern artist, examined the broken couple, he picked up his briefcase and left the Sunshine Motel with a smile that had not been there when he entered it.

 

Reviews

[cyanskye]

This is a strong start for what sounds like a very exciting novel. You have some well drawn descriptions of the characters. I would love to see more description of the room itself. I feel it would round out the story and give the reader an even better idea of the squalor the couple was staying in and the carnage the girl is left with.

V5C

[Jetta Zippora]

Wow! Drawn in from the very first word...nice write, friend!

[Jane Doe]

good good i would really really like it if you continued this though

[Lady]

I'm normally not a fan of the horror/serial killer genre, but this proved to be quite a thrilling read. It was like a guilty pleasure for myself. Though I think it would be more interesting if the victim was more alive for us first, rather than just a dying, dead corpse. You should make your readers feel more attached to this young man so that his death is even more dramatic and emotionally effective.
There were a few things I noticed:
The word "As" felt redundant towards the beginning of your story within these two sentences:

"With every plunge and flash of silver, new coats of blood painted the blade, as a gurgling sound shattered the eerie silence. As the wielder finished the gruesome task, a soft whimper could be heard..."

Also, the first sentence doesn't flow well enough. I would possibly change it to something like this:

"With every plunge and flash of silver, new coats of blood painted the blade and sprayed wildly across the walls, while a gurgling sound shattered the eerie silence. As the wielder finished his gruesome task, a soft whimper could be heard..."

As for the girlfriend, I don't think it's really necessary to explain why she's traumatized. An image of her rocking back and forth, crying and shaking with blood splattered on her pale face, is enough for us to comprehend.
Keep it simple yet intriguing.
You may want to look into psychology for this story you're creating. It may help you a bit with the human mind, etc.

Nice write, very exciting and mysterious to read about.
Good work - keep going!

Lady

[Kaitlin W. Blaylock]

MORE MORE MORE!!!!! Bloody brilliant (pun intended)

[Jemima Laing]

You develop your characters really well. I think in the third paragraph you might want to change unmistakingly with unmistakably, it flows better. An excellent beginning.

[Rebecca Rogers]

"With every plunge and flash of silver, new coats of blood painted the blade, as a gurgling sound shattered the eerie silence."
I would edit this again. Maybe cut it into two sentences. "With every plunge and flash of silver, new coats of blood painted the blade. A gurgling sound shattered the eerie silence."

Also, why didn't the killer kill the girlfriend? Will that be explained later?

Good job with the details. The edited version is better.

[Frances O'Neill]

I like the longer paragraphs in the edited version of the chapter and I also like some of the

rephrasing but isn't that someone else's version of what the writer said?

[Mr. Misanthrope]

Thanks for all of your reviews! They're really helping me, and i feel like this group is just one big happy family, with all of the members sharing one common interest. I guess you already know what it is. Hehe. I still want to go over this chapter again, and maybe solve this problem of how the poor guy dies. Also, (cyanskye) I wasn't intending to show what sort of crap these people were living in, as these characters are meant to be quite well off, and maybe the killer had drugged them and taken them to some abandoned area. As you can see with the woman left in the background, she was force-fed too many drugs, and this leaves her mind fragile to the horrors she has just witnessed. :)

-Luke

[Ashley the Fox]

Well, it also says that the man died on the third stab. The throat could've been slit afterwords, but the blood wouldn't have flowed, it would've just kinda oozed for a minute or so. (Sorry, too many murder mysteries and forensic books). I don't think either needs to be left out. A little overkill makes for a more chilling murder.

PS ~ Apologies about the overkill pun. I didn't see any way to avoid it.

[xX-tito24-Xx]

Well, I edited this so I shouldn't be commenting, but I just noticed something that I missed while editing... The story starts with the blade plunging in and out of the young man's body, but then we see that blood is spilling out of his slit throat... not sure which part you'd like to change, the plunging or the slit throat, though it'll look better without that inconsistency...

Soooo sorry for not noticing that when I touched it up for you the first time Luke!!!